VOL. V.T PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 47Q 



trial I dare not acquiesce in it. A while after, notwithstanding our continuing 

 to pump, the killing gave manifest signs of life, which was not till it had en- 

 dured divers convulsions, as great as those of the first fit, if not greater. 

 When seven minutes from the beginning of the exhaustion were completed, we 

 let in the air ; upon which the little creature, that seemed stark dead before, 

 made us suspect that he might recover; but though we took him out of the re- 

 ceiver, and put aquavitae into his mouth, yet he irrecoverably died in our 

 hands. 



These trials may deserve to be still further prosecuted by others, to be made 

 not only with such kittens, but with other very young animals of different kinds ; 

 for, by what has been related, it appears that those animals continued three 

 times longer in the exhausted receiver, than other animals of that size would 

 probably have done. 



The Fifth Title. 

 Some Trials about the Air usually harboured and concealed in the Pores of Watery &c. 



It might assist us in making the more rational conjectures about the phaeno- 

 mena of divers of our experiments, if we knew what quantity of aerial substance 

 is usually found in the liquors we employ about them, especially in that most 

 common of them, water. And therefore, though it be very difficult, (if at all 

 possible) to determine the proportion of the air that lurks in water with any 

 kind of certainty, many circumstances making it subject to vary very much, yet 

 to make the best estimate I easily could, where none at all that I know of has 

 been hitherto made by any man, I considered that it might afford us some light, 

 if we discovered at least what proportion as to bulk, the air latent in a quantity 

 of water would have to the liquor it came from, when the aerial particles should 

 be gathered together into one place. For, though about this union, and the 

 spring that may be consequent to it, some doubts may be suggested, which I 

 have not now time to discuss; yet I supposed that at least some discoveries 

 would by this way be made, though not of the true proportion between the air 

 and the water, yet about two or three particulars, in due time to be taken no- 

 tice of. 



To find instruments, which would any way accommodate our purpose, proved 

 a very difficult work; so that among other things that we were fain to do, this 

 was one, that to evince how little the air latent in water did appear to lessen the 

 bulk of that water, if it were suffered to fly away in an open tube; we suffered 

 it to escape in an exhausted receiver without any artifice to catch it; by which 

 trial the water did not sensibly lose any part of its bulk. Wherefore we 



