as ’twere, or interwoven, and here and there they join and unite with one another, so as indeed the whole skin seems to be but one piece, we need not much wonder:  And though these fibres appear not through a Microscope exactly jointed and contex’d, as in Sponge; yet, as I formerly hinted, I am apt to think, that could we find some way of discovering the texture of it, whil’st it invests the living Animal, or had some very easie way of separating the pulp or intercurrent juices, such as in all probability fill those Interstitia, without dilacerating, brusing, or otherwise spoiling the texture of it (as it seems to be very much by the ways of tanning and dressing now us’d) we might discover a much more curious texture then I have hitherto been able to find; perhaps somewhat like that of Sponges.

That of Chamoise Leather is indeed very much like that of Spunk, save onely that the filaments seem nothing neer so even and round, nor altogether so small, nor has it so curious joints as Spunk has, some of which I have lately discover’d like those of a Sponge, and perhaps all these three bodies may be of the same kind of substance, though two of them indeed are commonly accounted Vegetable (which, whether they be so or no, I shall not now dispute) But this seems common to all three, that they undergo a tanning or dressing, whereby the interspers’d juices are wasted and wash’d away before the texture of them can be discover’d.

What their way is of dressing, or curing Sponges, I confess, I cannot learn; but the way of dressing Spunk, is, by boiling it a good while in a strong Lixivium, and then beating it very well; and the manner of dressing Leather is sufficiently known.

It were indeed extremely desirable, if such a way could be found whereby the Parenchyma or flesh of the Muscles, and several other parts of the body, might be wash’d, or wafted clean away, without vitiating the form of the fibrous parts or vessells of it, for hereby the texture of thole parts, by the help of a good Microscope, might be most accurately found.

But to digress no further, we may, from this discovery of the Microscope, plainly enough understand how the skin, though it looks so close as it does, comes to give a passage to so vast a quantity of excrementitious substances, as the diligent Sanctorius has excellently observed it to do, in his medicina statica; for it seems very probable, from the texture after dressing, that there are an infinit of pores that every way pierce it, and that those pores are onely fill’d with some kind of juice, or some very pulpy soft substance, and thereby the steams may almost as easily find a passage through such a fluid vehicle as the vaporous bubbles which are generated at the bottom of a Kettle of hot water do find a passage through that fluid medium into the ambient Air.