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thrive as kindly with us as in their natural climate;” and this Dr. Bunting 
affirms to have himself accomplished.” 
“ That by the air,” continues Evelyn, “ the moist effete and elixiviated 
mould comes to be repaired, and is qualified to attract the prolific nitrous 
spirit (which converts her inactive salts into quite another genius and nature, 
and, invading the sulphur, stirs up an intestine fermentation, which gives life, 
and growth, and motion, to all she produces), the learned Dr. Mayow has 
very ingeniously made out; and all this by a naked exposure of the earth to 
the air alone, without which it produces nothing.” 
“ Nor can plants, totally excluded from the air, live, or so much as erect 
themselves to any thriving purpose, as being deprived of that breath and 
vital balm which no less contributes to their growth and nourishment, than 
does the earth itself with all our foreign assistances.” 
We cannot help here remarking, that although we must admire the 
sagacity of our ancestors, who thus, by mere observation of natural pheno¬ 
mena, wonderfully approached those truths which the most accurate experi¬ 
mental analysis has at this day demonstrated, yet must we confess, that the 
merit of actual discovery is more properly due to philosophers of the present 
times; for it is one thing to conjecture , and a very different to demonstrate. 
The honour, therefore, of really proving the fecundating property of 
vital air, as absorbed by the earth , is due to my worthy and much- 
lamented friend Dr. Ingenhousz. 
EXPERIMENT I. 
“ I put,” says this philosopher, “ under a bell, containing forty-six cubic 
inches of common air, some garden mould, and I exposed this, in a suitable 
apparatus, from six at night to the same hour the next day, and I found the 
air reduced below 12 degrees of the quality of common air.” 
EXPERIMENT II. 
“ At nine o’clock in the morning I put under a bell-glass, containing 
100 inches of common air, four plants of the mint kind, very vigorous, and 
growing in a pot filled with garden-mould, and, examining the air at six in 
the evening, I found it degraded from QQ to Q3 degrees. 
R 
