VOL. v.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 503 



found, that In a few minutes he began to be sick and pant ; which symptoms I 

 suffered to continue and increase against the mind of a learned by-stander, 

 (who thought the animal would not hold out so long) till they had lasted just 

 half an hour : at which time having provided a vessel of water with sal ammoniac 

 newly put into it, to refrigerate it, (according to the way I elsewhere published,) 

 and the liquor thus made exceedingly cold, somewhat to the wonder of those 

 that felt it ; the phial with the sick bird was immersed in it, and kept there in 

 that condition for six minutes; and yet it did not appear, in the judgment of the 

 by-standers, that the great refrigeration, that must be this way procured to the 

 imprisoned air, did sensibly revive or refresh the drooping animal, who 

 manifestly continued to pant exceedingly as before, and, as some affirmed, 

 more; so that this remedy proving ineffectual, the phial was removed out of the 

 water, and the bird some time after did, as I foretold, make many strains to 

 vomit (though she brought up little) followed by evacuations downward, before 

 she quite expired, which she did within a minute or two of a just hour, after 

 the beginning of her imprisonment. 



If I had been able (which I was not) to procure more birds, I would willingly 

 have prosecuted this experiment by several other not unhopeful trials; which 

 for want of subjects I was fain to leave only designed. 



The Sixteenth Title. 



Of the Use of the Air to elevate the Steams of Bodies. 



In the digression about respiration annexed to the 41st of our physico-me- 

 chanical experiments formerly published, it is proposed as one of the consider- 

 able uses of the air in respiration, that, being drawn into the lungs, it serves to 

 carry off with it, when breathed out again, the recrementitious steams that are 

 separated from the mass of blood in its passage through the lungs : from which 

 fuliginous excrements, if the blood were not continually freed by the help of the 

 air, after nature had been accustomed to that way of discharging them, their 

 stay in the body might have very great and destructive operations on it. 



For the illustration of this use of the air, I shall now subjoin the following 

 experiment. 



We made, by distillation, a blood-red liquor, which chiefly consisted of such 

 saline and spirituous particles, as may be obtained from the mass of blood in 

 human bodies ; this liquor is of such a nature, that if a glass phial about half 

 filled with it, be kept well stopped, the red liquor will rest as quietly as any 

 ordinary one, without sending up any smoke or visible exhalation ; but if the phial 

 be unstopped, so that the external air be permitted to come in, and touch the 



