CALORIFICATION. 361 



If we examine the changes which those ele- 

 ments have undergone, of which this new com- 

 pound is formed, their sensible properties will 

 be found totally different in their combined, 

 from what they were in their elementary state. 

 While therays of light proceed from theirsource 

 to boundless space, with the velocity of 200,000 

 miles in one second of time, the motion of the 

 calorific rays are limited and retarded, and 

 ultimately arrested, while the direction of the 

 motion of the one is from the perpendicular to 

 the base ; the motion of the other is rather di- 

 rected from the base to the perpendicular,* 



thorn the depth, or calculate the quantity of water which 

 exists, we know, with tolerable accuracy, the limited extent of 

 the region of the air. We may, therefore, conclude, that the 

 one is totally unequal to account for the existence of the other. 

 That these airs did not exist originally, or antecedently, to 

 water, is proved from hence, that either one, or both of them, 

 are the produce of vegetable or animal action ; or from the 

 decomposition which living beings undergo, by the process of 

 putrefaction and decay. I do not mean to speak of the facti- 

 tious means by which they are prepared. I allude to the 

 common sources from whence they are actually and sponta- 

 neously obtained. If these airs have their source from living 

 beings, if they are effects of which living matter is the cause, 

 it is impossible that they can be the sonree and the cause of 

 water, because water existed antecedently to cither the one, 

 or the other. 



* If two bars of iron, of equal dimensions, are placed 

 through the same fire, the further extremity of the upper one, 



