604 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1721. 



the matter called fat, was brought into them ; which, when there was too great 

 a supply of nutriment, so that it could not be forced farther on, must be driven 

 out of these vessels; for, all the particles of fat I have as yet observed, are in- 

 closed in small films. 



This origin of the fat is to me much more credible than that it should be 

 forced out of the blood-vessels; and yet how these fat particles, which consist 

 of small globules, and those out of still smaller globules, are formed, I cannot 

 as yet determine; as also where these vessels, which constitute these mem- 

 branes, have their origin, and how this fat is conveyed into them. 



I had in my drawer a piece of ox's flesh, which I believe had lain there about 

 4 years, wrapped up in a paper; which piece I found in some places to be covered 

 with a membrane; from this I cut oflT several small slices along with the mem- 

 brane; and I found that near the membrane there lay about l6 or J 8 nervous 

 fibrils, which, in the drying of the flesh, were so squeezed together, that they 

 were almost twice as long as broad. In some of them I saw very distinctly 

 those vessels which are in the nerves. 



These nervous fibrils were inclosed in a kind of half round, separating them 

 from the muscular fibres, and which consisted of a row of small tendinous 

 fibrils, each about twice as thick as a hair of a man's beard. Without these 

 tendinous fibrils lay the muscular fibres, which had been cut through trans- 

 versely; and in this part of the half round there were several apertures, which 

 seemed in the microscope to be large enough for hemp-seed to pass through 

 them, which might well be taken for vessels, but that there lay so many of 

 them together. But considering that the nerves are commonly covered with fat 

 particles, I concluded that these apertures were no vessels, but mere fat par- 

 ticles, which I found to be true on cutting them through, and discovered that 

 the inner fat was eaten out by the mites, which had left only the husks, or 

 cortices, of the fat globules behind ; which cortices I never had as yet been able 

 to discover, because they would, by any heat, melt away as fast as the inner 

 fat itself. 



Observations on the Vessels in several kinds of JVood, and on the Muscular Fibres 

 of different Animals. By the same. N°367, p. 134. 



I procured a piece of reddish wood, brought from the island of Amboyna, in 

 the East Indies, and of which cabinets are made, sawed off at the end of a 

 board, as also some of the chips, in order to observe the vessels in it; and cut- 

 ting the wood through all manner of ways, I found that in one place it appeared 

 whitish, at a small distance red, and in another place blackish. On cutting it 

 transversely, I saw the orifices of the ascending vessels, which ran along the 



