44' PHILOSOPHICAL TKANSACTIONS. [anNO 1684. 



over the edges of one or more scales, should cause a motion in them, which 

 being communicated to the skin, may cause that sensation. 



There has been exhibited in this country a child about 10 years old, whose 

 body, as they said, was all covered with fish scales. Having heard much of 

 this wonder, I went to see it, but found it much different from the report of it. 

 For there appeared to my naked eye and microscope no part of the body which 

 I could say was covered with fish scales, but rather with a thick callus, and more 

 especially within the hands and under the feet, upon some parts of the body 

 also there were excrescences, like ridges of warts. 



In the room I found a cluster, which my repeated observations confirm to be 

 nothing but natural and ordinary scales, such as bodies are generally covered 

 with. I afterwards put it in water, and let it lie some hours, till the parts would 

 separate with the least touch into 1000 small scales. 



I have been a long time desirous to examine the slimy matter which lines the 

 inside of the guts ; and so much the rather, because it is generally esteemed as 

 a superfluous part, and fit to be removed; whereas on the contrary it appears 

 to me, to be a part instrumental and necessary for the uses of the bowels. I 

 took then this woolly substance, and having cleared it from the excrement as 

 much as I could, I found a great number of very thin blood-vessels, branched 

 out and lying so thick together, that the space of half the diameter of a hair 

 was not void between the branches. Besides the blood-vessels there were also 

 other vessels that had no distinguishable colour, which I suspected to be lim- 

 phatics or lacteals; I could not discern any membrane that encompassed them, 

 but all about them lay a glutinous clear slime, beset with small globules, which 

 slime and globules I took to be the excrements lying upon the guts, but when 

 I went to scrape gently this slime away, I found that I not only wounded the 

 blood-vessels, but tore away many blood-vessels and other vessels together. 



These blood-vessels do not spread their branches on all sides, like the blood- 

 vessels in other parts of the body, but as they lie in a bow, send all their 

 branches inward and none outwards; they also lie so close, that I imagine 10,000 

 of them may be in the space of an inch square. 



I have been doubtful whether the arteries and veins were not in this place 

 joined together; for among all the experience that I have had of the blood- 

 vessels, I never perceived such a probability of anastomosis. For in other 

 places the arteries being variously disseminated for the nourishment of the parts, 

 the veins are so likewise, for carrying the blood back again into the heart; but 

 in this place the arteries going no further than the hollow of the guts, seem to 

 have no other business than to empty themselves into the veins. These obser- 

 vations also make me more than ever reject the opinion, that the extremities of ■ 



