348 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1 705. 



to a circular figure again, unless broken by the compression, which frequently 

 happened, and then the broken parts floated separately ; or, if they opened at a 

 single joint only, the whole of the ring would float along, varying its figure oc- 

 casionally from that of a portion of a circle, which it would first assume, to a 

 straight line, an undulated one, or some other accidental incurvature. The ar- 

 ticulation was visible in several of the perfect rings, but for the most part it was 

 not to be distinguished, though even in these, from their breaking so easily, it 

 was iiot to be doubted but that they consisted of the same detached members or 

 joints as those in which the transverse divisions were visible. 



On applying afterwards magnifiers of less power to the same blood, the 

 greater advantage of light made the rings appear still more perfect and distinct; 

 but as these were not applied, till the globules had lost their motion, and the 

 whole drop had become dry upon the talk, the divisions at the joints were none 

 of them visible; almost all the globules or rings, had, on drying, formed them- 

 selves into perfect circles. The most complete and satisfactory view of them in 

 this dried state, was with a magnifier that increased the diameter 640 times; 

 though the perforation was distinguishable even with one which increased it only 

 129 times. In many places the globules had, by the drying of the whole drop 

 united into a closer body, and seemed as if cemented together by a grumous 

 substance of a blackish or deep red colour, which possessed and filled up all the 

 exterior spaces formed by the union of so many circular bodies; but the interior 

 spaces or perforations of the rings were still free, and for the most part 

 distinctly visible, some few places excepted, where the globules seemed to have 

 united over one another, and not only lay in too much confusion to give room 

 for ai;iy proper observation of them, but formed also a body too dense to trans- 

 mit the light. The grumous substance above-mentioned, as it extended itself 

 along the exterior spaces, had the appearance of a ramification ; and it was per- 

 haps in some such state that the globules were viewed by Dr. Adams, whose 

 glasses induced him to suspect the truth of the common opinion, that the blood 

 consisted of globular particles, and to describe them rather as imitating the 

 branches of a tree. 



On the Sexes of Plants. By the same. p. 258. 



Mr. E. S. supposes, that not only in the Dioecious plants, but in the Mo- 

 noecious and Polygamious also, and, to speak more generally, in all cases where 

 the male and female organs are found separate, the defect is not in the flower, 

 which he supposed to be originally constructed with the rudiments of the organs 

 of both sexes, but that it arises from some circumstance in the plant that deter- 

 mines it to blow the one organ and not the other. That the absence of the 

 rudiments is not to be inferred from the want of their expansion, appears plainly 

 from the following circumstances that fall under every one's observation, viz. 



