538 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [anNO 1681-2. 



the vast number there must be of such filaments in every muscle ? and yet who 

 knows but that still there may be another inferior order of filaments, and that 

 every one of these 3200 filaments, contained in one single muscular string, 

 may be yet farther composed of great numbers of smaller filaments. 



After I had with admiration viewed the great number of flesh-muscles of the 

 ».ail of an ox, I resolved to observe the tail of another creature, viz. a thorn- 

 back, but in cutting through the same tail, I considered the blood which issued 

 out of it, wherein I admired that the parts of the blood, which in mankind are 

 globules, and make the blood red, are here altogether oval parts, which had a 

 small thickness, driving through a crystalline matter; and where these oval 

 parts lay single they had no colour, but when they lay 3 or 4 thick on each 

 other, they had a red colour. This made me observe the blood of a cod and of 

 a salmon, which I found to contain oval figures as the former ; and though I 

 endeavoured to observe the same very exactly, I could not find of what parts 

 these ovals were constituted, for some seemed to have inclosed in them in a 

 small space a kind of globules, and a small space from the said globule it was 

 surrounded with a transparent ring, and then again about the same ring a long- 

 ish shadowing circle, which made up the oval figure. 



I took the season when oysters came to us in a short time from England, 

 and observed with admiration, what an extraordinary motion the beard of the 

 oyster made, and although I took some very minute parts of it, many of which 

 would not together make out the size of a sand, yet these parts, so broken, had 

 such a motion as was inconceivable ; for I imagined that such a small part re- 

 presented to me a shrimp with its continual moving pattens, and others like a 

 lobster. And one might have sworn that it was no part of the beard of the 

 oyster, but an animal of itself, notwithstanding the contrary appeared, for such 

 a part of the beard made no progressive motion, and remained in its motion 

 lying in one place so long time, that when my sight failed me with looking, I 

 was forced to leave it; and besides the fibres, which in so small a part seemed 

 pattens or paws, had the same motion with the parts of the whole beard. 



I observed the shell of an oyster, and found it all made up of plates laid in 

 great numbers one over another, always larger and larger; so that the increase 

 of the oyster shell is caused by the addition of a new lamen or plate in the 

 shell, which last new made plate exceeds the rest in magnitude. These laminae 

 seem to be made up of small pipes, which are much interwoven. But that 

 which gave me most satisfaction was, that when each of these laminas was ar 

 rived at its full size, then from the small pipes of the laminae were put forth 

 minute laminae, which are not white like the rest, but of a brown colour, and 

 constituted of globules. 



