VOL. XXXI.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS 503 



I happened on one piece with its branches so plain, that the membranes and 

 fibres looked like so many boughs of trees, with the leaves on them, as repre- 

 sented at fig. 14, by klmn, where m shows the membrane torn ofF from 

 another, as also how many branches it runs into, and the many fibres it 

 covers. 



All these carnous fibres, with the membranes, lay very compact together, 

 when cut off from the piece of flesh, as also when laid on the glass, and 

 moistened; but as the moisture dried away, they shrunk again, in the manner 

 here represented, and though the designer could plainly distinguish the small 

 vessels which were cut through, the largest of which appeared at m, fig. 14, 

 yet he was obliged to mark them only with points. Here we may observe, that 

 all the carnous fibres, having been closely tied together by the said membranes, 

 by which they were enveloped, which are nothing but a congeries of vessels, 

 could not be separated from each other on drying, but by tearing those mem« 

 branes asunder. 



The carnous fibres, along with the membrane at klmn, do not take up so 

 much room, but that a grain of sand may cover it, and yet one might very 

 distinctly observe, in some of those carnous fibres, the parts of which they 

 were composed. 



I pursued this observation in the flesh of a whale, of which I had kept two 

 pieces by me for about 7 or 8 years, of about a span long, and 2 inches thick; 

 from these I cut several slices transversely, but found that the carnous fibres so 

 cut through easily separated from each other, so that I could not find my account 

 in this, but thought that the membranes were rotten. I therefore cut off the 

 outside with a table knife, and then with a very sharp knife cut the inner part 

 into very fine slices; and there I found the excrements of mites, which were 

 very small but globular, and some of them as small as I had ever seen before ; 

 and thus I found these excrements every where, especially where the membranes 

 were thickest; then viewing the parts where the membranes were thinnest, I 

 discovered in the membranes the aforesaid vessels, and that in as great a 

 number as I had seen them in the ox's flesh, and as distinctly as one can 

 see the holes in a thimble with the naked eye. 



After the former discoveries I had made concerning the circulation of the 

 blood, particularly that the blood-vessels had no terminations, I began to con- 

 sider how the fat particles could be formed, since I did not think that they 

 were separated from the blood and came out of the blood-vessels. But having 

 now plainly discovered, that these membranes were nothing but very small 

 vessels, and believing that they were formed for no other end, but to transport 

 nutriment, as also that there was no circulation in these vessels, I imagined that 



