SECTION I.. _of_ Air.

Of AIR.

Air is that Fluid which we constantly breathe, and which surrounds the whole surface of the terrestrial globe. Being heavy, like all other bodies, it penetrates into all places that are not either absolutely inaccessible, or filled with some other body heavier than itself. Its principal property is to be susceptible of condensation and rarefaction; so that the very same quantity of Air may occupy a much greater, or a much smaller space, according to the different state it is in. Heat and cold, or, if you will, the presence and the absence of the particles of Fire, are the most usual causes, and indeed the measures, of its condensation and rarefaction: for if a certain quantity of Air be heated, its bulk enlarges in proportion to the degree of heat applied to it; the consequence of which is, that the same space now contains fewer particles of Air than it did before. Cold again produces just the opposite effect.

On this property which Air has, of being condensed and rarefied by heat, its elasticity or springiness chiefly depends. For if Air were forced by condensation into a less compass than it took up before, and then exposed to a very considerable degree of cold, it would remain quite inactive, without exerting such an effort as it usually makes against the compressing body. On the other hand, the elasticity of heated Air arises only from hence, that being rarefied by the action of Fire, it requires much more space than it occupied before.

Air enters into the composition of many substances, especially vegetable and animal bodies: for by analysing most of them such a considerable quantity thereof is extricated, that some naturalists have suspected it to be altogether destitute of elasticity when thus combined with the other principles in the composition of bodies. According to them, the efficacy of the elastic power of the Air is so prodigious, and its force when compressed so excessive, that it is not possible the other component parts of bodies should be able to confine so much of it, in that state of compression which it must needs undergo, if retaining its elasticity it were pent up among them.

However that be, this elastic property of the Air produces the most singular and important phenomena, observable in the resolution and composition of bodies.