VOL. XXIX.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 83 



Fig. 11, represents a small part of this flesh. These particles seemed to 

 touch and be joined to others; but now being dried, they shrunk in from the 

 membranes about them ; which membranes could not shrink, being all joined 

 to one another. Along these flesh-fibres there run some membranes, of the 

 thickness of a hair or more, scarcely distant the breadth of a sand from each 

 other ; from these larger membranes other parts are spread, dividing each fibre 

 into numerous fibrils ; so that it may be said, that each flesh-fibre, no thicker 

 than a hair, is a small muscle, encompassed by its peculiar coat or membrane. 

 And as the painter had not the same idea of the size of these fibres, as I and 

 some other persons had, I made him draw a small bit as large as it appeared to 

 my apprehension, as in fig. 12, whence appears the difference between one 

 man's sight and another. 



I have also often seen some few of these fibres, though joined to others, 

 yet only the 4th part of the size of those to which they were joined. 



When I again moistened those represented in fig. 11 and 12, (that were 

 dried and shrunk up) they again became so distended, as to fill up the spaces 

 between the membranes, and re-assume the shape they had before they were 

 dried. Among several little pieces of flesh placed before another microscope, 

 and moistened as before, there was one, whose particles were not separated on 

 drying, which I supposed to be, from the splitting and tearing asunder of a 

 large membrane, that ran through the middle of it, as in fig. 13, where be- 

 tween s, T, and V, the dried particles remain unseparated ; these being cut a 

 little thicker appeared also of a darker hue, and had they been sliced yet 

 thicker, they would have appeared of a dark red. sw represents the thick 

 membrane dividing this piece, which was about the size of a hair ; this at t 

 sent out a branch, and near w is split into two ; I apprehend that a great 

 number of blood-vessels are spread over this membrane, which by their small- 

 ness are not visible; for it is by these the nourishment is conveyed. Between 

 RS and aw the exceedingly fine membranes torn from the great are visible. It 

 is amazing that in so huge an animal as a whale, such exceedingly small fibrils 

 should be found; nay, the same as they are in small animals; and that the 

 whole 1 3th figure is not so large as a coarse grain of sand. 



I caused a very little piece, consisting only of 5 fibrils, to be drawn length^ 

 wise, as they were seen through the microscope, and represented in fig. 14, 

 in which figure about a, it is divided into two fibrils. Between c and f are to 

 be seen the little membranes which encompass the fibrils, which are here 

 torn asunder. 



I have frequently with pleasure observed these flesh-fibres lengthwise, as it 

 were corrugated or wrinkled, which I imagined to be the representation of their 



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