If a small piece of muscle be examined under a microscope it is found to be made up of bundles of fibers. Each fiber is enclosed within a delicate, transparent sheath, known as the sarcolemma. If one of these fibers be further examined under a microscope, it will be seen to consist of a great number of still more minute fibers called fibrillæ. These fibers are also seen marked cross-wise with dark stripes, and can be separated at each stripe into disks. These cross markings account for the name _striped_ or _striated_ muscle. The fibrillæ, then, are bound together in a bundle to form a fiber, which is enveloped in its own sheath, the sarcolemma. These fibers, in turn, are further bound together to form larger bundles called fasciculi, and these, too, are enclosed in a sheath of connective tissue. The muscle itself is made up of a number of these fasciculi bound together by a denser layer of connective tissue. Experiment 17. _To show the gross structure of muscle._ Take a small portion of a large muscle, as a strip of lean corned beef. Have it boiled until its fibers can be easily separated. Pick the bundles and fasciculi apart until the fibers are so fine as to be almost invisible to the naked eye. Continue the experiment with the help of a hand magnifying glass or a microscope. 67. The Involuntary Muscles. These muscles consist of ribbon-shaped bands which surround hollow fleshy tubes or cavities. We might compare them to India rubber rings on rolls of paper. As they are never attached to bony levers, they have no need of tendons. Illustration: Fig. 31.—A, Muscular Fiber, showing Stripes, and Nuclei, b and c. (Highly magnified.) The microscope shows these muscles to consist not of fibers, but of long spindle-shaped cells, united to form sheets or bands. They have no sarcolemma, stripes, or cross markings like those of the voluntary muscles. Hence their name of _non-striated_, or _unstriped_, and _smooth_ muscles. The involuntary muscles respond to irritation much less rapidly than do the voluntary. The wave of contraction passes over them more slowly and more irregularly, one part contracting while another is relaxing. This may readily be seen in the muscular action of the intestines, called vermicular motion. It is the irregular and excessive contraction of the muscular walls of the bowels that produces the cramp-like pains of colic. The smooth muscles are found in the tissues of the heart, lungs, blood-vessels, stomach, and intestines. In the stomach their contraction produces the motion by which the food is churned about; in the arteries and veins they help supply the force by which the blood is driven along, and in the intestines that by which the partly digested food is mainly kept in motion.