If from the natural state we pass to the morbid, we see the muscular extensibility manifested in a much more evident degree. In the face, the air accumulated in the mouth, swells it by elongating the buccinators; the various tumours of this cavity, as the fungous and sarcomatous ones, often distend the small facial muscles in a manner which would astonish us, if we considered the naturally small extent of these muscles which are trebled and even quadrupled. The muscles of the eye-lids and the eye in the large carcinomas of that organ, those of the anterior part of the neck in the great swellings of the thyroid gland, the great pectoral in large aneurisms or in other tumours of the axilla, the abdominal muscles in pregnancy, in dropsy, in the various tumours of the abdomen, &c. the broad and superficial muscles of the back from wens that are under them, present us these phenomena of distension in a remarkable manner. The muscles of the extremities are less subject to them, because on the one hand fewer causes develop tumours beneath them, and because on the other the aponeuroses do not yield so easily to these phenomena. _Contractility of Texture._ The contractility of texture is carried to the highest point in the muscles. These organs have a continual tendency to contraction, especially when by being elongated, they have surpassed their natural size. This tendency is independent of the action of the nerves, and of the irritable property of the muscular texture. It is influenced by life, but it is not entirely dependent on it; it depends essentially on the structure of the muscles. The remarkable phenomenon of the antagonist muscles results from it. The following is this phenomenon.