often appearing to be flattened. Such oval particles were found to be numerous and extremely active in white arsenic.
As mineral bodies which had been fused contained the moving molecules as abundantly as those of alluvial deposits, I was desirous of ascertaining whether the mobility of the particles existing in organic bodies was in any degree affected by the application of intense heat to the containing substance. With this view small portions of wood, both living and dead, linen, paper, cotton, wool, silk, hair, and muscular fibres, were exposed to the flame of a candle or burned in platina forceps, heated by the blowpipe; and in [11 all these bodies so heated, quenched in water, and immediately submitted to examination, the molecules were found, and in as evident motion as those obtained from the same substances before burning.
In some of the vegetable bodies burned in this manner, in addition to the simple molecules, primary combinations of these were observed, consisting of fibrils having transverse contractions, corresponding in number, as I conjectured, with that of the molecules composing them; and those fibrils, when not consisting of a greater number than four or five molecules, exhibited motion resembling in kind and vivacity that of the mineral fibrils already described, while longer fibrils of the same apparent diameter were at rest.
The substance found to yield these active fibrils in the largest proportion and in the most vivid motion was the mucous coat interposed between the skin and muscles of the haddock, especially after coagulation by heat.
The fine powder produced on the under surface of the fronds of several Ferns, particularly of Acrostichum calomelanos, and the species nearly related to it, was found to be entirely composed of simple molecules and their primary fibre-like compounds, both of them being evidently in motion.
There are three points of great importance which I was anxious to ascertain respecting these molecules, namely, their form, whether they are of uniform size, and their absolute magnitude. I am not, however, entirely satisfied
