VOL. IX.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 14f» 



elastic particles, insomuch that he doubts not but that something aerial abso- 

 lutely necessary to life, passes into the blood of animals by means of their respi- 

 ration; whose necessity therefore he cannot acknowledge to arise from thence 

 only, that thereby and by the motion of the lungs the mass of blood may be 

 comminuted, as some have asserted : concluding at last, that fire and life are 

 maintained by the same aerial parts ; and giving a reason, why an animal is able 

 to live in a receiver awhile after a candle is extinguished, which is, that, in his 

 opinion, there is required a greater quantity of aerial particles to the burning 

 of a candle, than the maintaining of life. Whence yet he would by no means 

 have it inferred, that though flame and life are maintained by the same parti- 

 cles, therefore the mass of blood is kindled, as some teach. 



He imagines that the nitro-aerial particles, from which the spring of the 

 air proceeds, are lodged in the very parts of the air, and carried away from it 

 by the burning of a candle, or the respiration of animals ; so that those nitro- 

 aerial and elastic parts that come to fail are not the air itself, but the subtilest 

 and the most active part thereof, which being expelled by burning or respiration, 

 the air becomes effete, and destitute of its spring. Moreover he considers, 

 how the air, when deprived of its nitro-aerial parts, is again supplied with 

 them I * 



He afterwards proceeds to explain in what manner the nitro-aerial spirit is 

 breathed in by animals ; and how it comes to lose in them its elastic power; 

 and of what use it is being inspired; where he teaches that those nitro-aerial 

 parts are in animals as well as in vegetables the principal instrument of life and 

 motion; and that the fermentation both of the blood and the vegetable juice 

 depends on the same. 



He then inquires, whether air may be generated de novo, and, on this occa- 

 sion, recites an experiment, which he says is like to one formerly made by Mr. 

 Boyle, tending to prove the affirmative of the question. Concerning which, 

 this author is of opinion, that though the aura, produced by that experiment, 

 and by others here recited, be endowed with a no less spring than the air we 

 breathe in ; yet it is no true air, such as contains vital and igneous parts ; for as 

 much as that aura, wherein he found an animal and a lighted candle to expire, 

 was, he says, endowed with a spring as well as an unviolated air, but destitute of 

 nitro-aerial and vital parts. Mean time, he suggests an experiment to discover, 

 whether the pretended new generated air be true air indeed and fit to maintain 



* In the writings of this ingenious philosopher, we may easily trace, (as we have already hinted at 

 p. 295, of the 1st vol. of our abridgement,) the outlines of the modern chemical theories concerning 

 acidification, conibustion, and respiration. Unfortunately for science, Mayow died at a very early 

 age. By nitro-aerial spirit, he meant the same principle which the chemists of these days have deno- 

 minated oxygen. 



VOL. II. U 



