8 SCIENCE PRIMERS. [§ ii. 



First of all there is the skin with the hair on the 

 outside. If you carefully cut this through with a 

 knife or pair of scissors and strip it off, you will find 

 it smooth and shiny inside. Underneath the skin you 

 see what you call flesh, rather paler, not so red as the 

 flesh of beef or mutton, but still quite like it. Cover- 

 ing the flesh there may be a little fat. In a sheep's leg 

 as you see it at the butcher's there is a good deal of 

 fat, in the rabbit's there is very little. 



This reddish flesh you must henceforward learn to 

 speak of as muscle. If you pull it about a little, you 

 will find that you can separate it easily into parcels or 

 slips running lengthways down the leg, each slip being 

 fastened tight at either end, but loose between. Each 

 slip is what is called a muscle. You will notice that 

 many of these muscles are joined, sometimes at one 

 end only, som ^times at both, to white or bluish white 

 glistening cordb ^r bands, made evidently of diflisrent 

 material from the muscle itself. They are not soft and 

 fleshy like the muscle, but firm and stiff". These are 

 tendons. Sometimes they are broad and short, 

 sometimes thin and long. % 



As you are separating these muscles from each other 

 you will see (running down the leg between them) 

 little white soft threads, very often branching out and 

 getting too small to be seen. These are nerves. 

 Between the muscles too are other little cords, red, 

 or reddish black, and if you prick them, a drop or 

 several drops of blood will ooze out. These are veins, 

 and are not really cords or threads, but hollow tubes, 

 filled with blood. Lying alongside the veins are 

 similar small tubes, containing very little blood, or 

 none at all. These are arteries. The veins and 



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