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XL The Croonian Lecture . On the changes the blood undergoes in 
the act of coagulation .. By Sir Everard Home, Bart . 
V.P. R. S. 
Read November eo, 1817. 
It is not a little remarkable, that in the first Lecture of this 
kind, which I laid before the Society, in the year 1790, I 
should have endeavoured to show, that a muscular fibre was 
too minute an object to be seen by the human eye, even 
assisted by the best magnifying glasses then in use ; and that 
in this Lecture, I shall be able, by means of the great improve- 
ments that have been made in the use of the microscope, to 
show that a fibre not larger in diameter than one of the glo- 
bules of the blood can be demonstrated. 
To the Members of this Society who have so lately seen 
Mr. Bauer's drawings, of the glandular apparatus peculiar to 
the Java swallow; of the internal membrane of the human 
stomach, exposing structures that were not known to exist; 
also of so small an object as the human ovum, in which is 
seen the seat of the two most important organs of the body ; 
(drawings rendered beautiful by their simplicity and dis- 
tinctness ;) it will readily suggest itself, that Mr. Bauer is 
the person to whom I consider we are indebted for those im- 
provements. His whole life, I may say, has been employed in 
investigations of a similar nature in plants, observing first the 
natural appearances, and then magnifying them in different 
