168 Dr M. Barry on the Spiral Structure of Muscle, 



hold on my mind, that I connot see safety for the future of our 

 nation unless hy a great and comprehensive improvement in the 

 instruction of her people. I shall conclude in the language of Dr 

 Davy, when he addressed you on the henefits conferred by this 

 Institution both on science and on industry : — 



" There is no country which ought so much to glory in the 

 progress of science as this happy island. Science has been a prime 

 cause of creating for us the inexhaustible wealth of manufactures ; 

 and it is by science that it must be preserved and extended. We 

 are interested as a commercial people ; we are interested as a free 

 people. The age of glory of a nation is also its age of security. 

 The same dignified feeling which urges men to gain dominion over 

 nations, will preserve them from the dominion of slavery. Natural, 

 and moral, and religious knowledge are of one family ; and happy 

 is the country, and great its strength, where they dwell together in 

 union." 



The Spiral Structure of Muscle and the Muscular Structure of 

 Cilia, as determined by Dr Martin Barry. 



We rejoice to learn that our distinguished friend, the cele- 

 brated physiologist, Dr Martin Barry, has so far recovered 

 from his long illness as to be able to resume his microscopical 

 investigations, and has lately published an account of his 

 renewed researches on the spiral structure of muscle. 



In tha year 1842, Dr Barry, in a memoir published in the 

 Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, recorded his 

 discovery of the spiral structure of muscle. Two or three to 

 whom he had shewn the tissue with his own microscope 

 believed what he wrote, but by most persons it was doubted, 

 by some flatly denied. Dr Barry's eye-sight became affected, 

 and for years that instrument remained unused.* But our 

 friend's sight was at length improved. He was in the same 

 city (Berlin) with the celebrated physiologist, Purkinje, and 

 shewed him that muscle had a spiral structure, and added 

 the very interesting observation, that cilia are no other than 



* Some observers had also declared, that when Dr Barry saw spermatozoa 

 within the ovum of the Rabbit, he saw too much. But since Dr Barry's an- 

 nouncement spermatozoa have been found in the ovum by others. In papers 

 laid before the Royal Society, the author of one of them found them within 

 the ovum of the Ascaris mystax, and the author of the other, who denied the 

 fact, confessed that he was obliged to cry peccavi, others finding them for him 

 within the ovum of the frog. 



