4Q8 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 167(>. 



these little creatures continued to swim up and down for some few days without 

 seeming to be much incommoded by so unusual a habitation ; and at the end 

 of that time, and much about the same day, they divested the habit they had 

 whilst they lived as fishes, and appeared with their exuviae or cast coats under 

 their feet, showing themselves to be perfect gnats, that stood without sinking 

 upon the surface of the water, and discovered themselves to be alive by their 

 motion, when they were excited to it : but I could not perceive them fly in that 

 thin medium ; to which inability, whether the viscosity of the water might con- 

 tribute I know not ; though they lived a pretty while, till hunger or cold de- 

 stroyed them. Something in this experiment may deserve serious reflections ; 

 which I cannot spare time to ofl^er at. 



u4 digressive Experiment concerning the Expansion of Blood and other Animal 



Juices, 



For some purposes, relating partly to respiration and partly to other inquiries, 

 I thought fit to endeavour to obtain what information could be procured of the 

 consistence and disposition of blood and other animal liquors to expand; in pur- 

 suance of which the ensuing trials, among others, were undertaken. 



The warm blood of a lamb or a sheep being taken, as it was hastily brought 

 from the butcher's, where the fibres had been broken to hinder the coagula- 

 tion, was in a wide mouthed glass put into a receiver, made ready for it, and 

 the pump being early set to work, the air was diligently drawn out; but thef 

 operation was not always, especially at first, so manifest as the splrituousness of 

 the liquor made some expect ; yet this hindered not but that after a long expec- 

 tation, the more subtle parts of the blood would begin to force their way through 

 the more clammy ones, and seem to boil in large clusters, some as large as 

 great beans or nutmegs, and sometimes, to the wonder of the by-standing phy- 

 sicians, the blood was so volatile, and the expansion so vehement, that it boiled 

 over the containing glass; of which, when it was put in, it did not by our es- 

 timate fill above a quarter. Having also included some milk, warm from the 

 cow, in a cylindrical vessel of about four or five inches high, though the ope- 

 rator was induced to pump a great while before any intumescence appeared in 

 the milk, yet afterwards when the external air was fully withdrawn, the white 

 liquor began to boil in a way that was not so easy to describe as pleasant to 

 behold; and this it did for a considerable time with so much impetuosity, that 

 it threw up several parts of itself out of the wide mouthed glass that contained 

 it (and could have contained as much more) though there were not above two 

 or three ounces of the liquor. 



