50^ PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1721. 



same manner through every carnous fibre in a healthful body. And these small 

 vessels were found to be only the 4th part of a blood globule. 



I took also part of the flesh of a whale, which I had kept some years by me, 

 and cut it into very thin slices directly across the fibres, and having moistened 

 these thin slices with fair water, I placed them upon several glasses, and before 

 several microscopes, when I observed that what I had formerly taken for small 

 threads or filaments, were in reality exceedingly small vessels. I then cut part 

 of the whale's flesh lengthwise, in order to discover the vessels, which convey 

 the nutritious juice out of the membranes into the muscular fibres, which 

 vessels then appeared to me in great plenty and very distinct. 



I afterwards took another piece of the flesh of an ox, which I cut through 

 transversely, and looking upon it with some of my best microscopes, I could 

 plainly see, that how small soever these fibres were, they were still vascular, for 

 I could see the light through the apertures of these vessels, as I had done before 

 in those of a whale ; but if I happened to cut the fibres ever so little obliquely, 

 instead of cutting them directly across their length, the light was not to be seen 

 through them. 



I had in a drawer the hind quarter of a mouse, which had lain there some 

 years; from the largest muscle of which, I cut off transversely some small slices, 

 as thin as possibly I could. Then placing these before my microscope, I not 

 only saw, that the carnous fibres were of the same thickness with those of 

 an ox, but I could also see the apertures of the vessels composing the carnous 

 fibres, as plainly as in the flesh of a whale ; the vessels in the muscular fibres of 

 a whale are indeed 6 times more in number than in those of an ox, or a mouse, 

 but then the fibre of a whale is also 6 times as thick as the other. 



Experiments relating to the Resistance of Fluids. By the Rev. J. T. Desa- 

 guliers, LL. D. F.R.S. N° 367, p. 142. 



I took a ball of gold, an inch in diameter, that had a little stem of the 

 same metal, with a place on it to fasten a string to; and having suspended it 

 by a silken thread too strong to lengthen by stretching, I made the distance 

 between the centre of the ball and the point of suspension, equal to 12.5 

 inches ; then causing the ball to vibrate in a trough full of water, which had 

 an upright piece of wood in the middle of one side, with pins or keys from 

 which the ball hung, that the centre of suspension might always be in the same 

 place, I observed by looking from a pin on one side of the trough to a mark 

 made opposite to it on the other side, whereabouts the string of the pendu- 

 lum, just above the surface of the water in which the ball was quite immersed, 

 went to, after 14 vibrations; and by another pin and opposite mark, also observed 



