VOL. IX.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. iGf 



The third tunicle was exceedingly thin and tender, and having viewed it, I found 

 it also to consist of globules united. I viewed three optic ner\'es of cows; but 

 I could find no hollowness in them ; I only took notice that they were made up 

 of many filamentous particles, of a very soft substance, as if they only consisted 

 of the corpuscles of the brain joined together, the threads were so very soft and 

 loose: they were composed of conjoined globules, and wound about again with 

 particles consisting of other transparent globules. I viewed the sixth pair of 

 nerves, called par vagum, cutting it off about the pipe in the lungs of a cow, 

 and finding it to consist of a very few filamentous particles, composed of globules 

 joined together, which thready parts are very strong, and they lay as wound 

 about with a matter made up of pellucid globules, of which the small threads 

 were composed. I found in them not only one hollowness, but as often as I 

 cut the nerve asunder, the hollowness still continued therein, and I found in 

 some places not only one cavity, but two or three cavities at once; and where 

 the cavity of the nerve was any thing large, it was lined about with films, as if 

 they had been purposely contrived there to keep open those cavities, and to 

 keep them from being compressed by the surrounding parts. 



About two leagues from this' town is an inland-sea, called Berk else Sea, 

 whose bottom in many places is very moorish. This water is in winter very 

 clear, but about the beginning or in the midst of summer it grows whitish, and 

 there are then small green clouds permeating it. Passing lately over this sea, 

 at a time when it blew a fresh gale of wind, and observing the water as above 

 described, I took up some of it in a glass vessel, which having viewed the next 

 day, I found moving in it several earthy particles, and some green streaks, 

 spirally ranged ; and the whole compass of each of these streaks was about the 

 thickness of a hair : other particles had but the beginning of the said streak ; all 

 consisting of small green globules interspersed ; among all which there crawled 

 abundance of little animals, some of which were roundish ; others were of an 

 oval figure : on these latter I saw two legs near the head, and two little fins on 

 the other end of their body : others were somewhat larger than an oval, and 

 these were very slow in their motion, and few in number. These animalcula 

 had divers colours, some being whitish, others pellucid; others had green and 

 very shining little scales ; others again were green in the middle, and before and 

 behind white, others grayish. And the motion of most of them in the water 

 was so swift and so various, upwards, downwards, and round about, that I 

 confess I could not but wonder at it. I judge that some of these little creatures 

 were above a thousand times smaller than the smallest ones, which I have 

 hitherto seen in cheese, wheaten flower, mould, and the like. 



