SUCH is the result of his Farther Inquiries into 
respiratory function of Plants and Animals which 
Author submits to the Public. In all that he has 
written, he has chiefly confined himself to a consid 
ation of the nature and extent of the changes whiwi 
living animals and vegetables induce on the air j and 
the amount of his researches may be comprised nearly 
in the simple statement, That oxygL.i gas is uniformly 
converted into carbonic acid during the exercise of 
the respiratory function, and that, by this chemical 
change in the air t its latent or specijic caloric is set 
free, and enters into the vegetable and animal sys- 
tems. 
The facts which establish this particular change 
in the air, and the consequent entrance of its ca- 
loric into the system, may now, he conceives, be 
considered as fully and universally ascertained ; 
but the effects which this subtile matter afterwards 
produces, and the laws by which it is developed, 
have been less attentively regarded, and are, there- 
fore, less perfectly understood. It was the Author's 
intention to have entered at once into a detailed in- 
vestigation of these subjects ; but the unexpected 
length to which his present inquiries have extended, 
and a wish to settle definitively the preliminary ques 
tions now discussed, have again arrested his pro 
gress, and brought him to a temporary pause. 
Should it, however, be thought, that, in the prc 
sent work, he has succeeded in establishing th 
general facts which relate to the changes induced ( 
