of Mayow’s views on the nature of atmospheric air. But the tale would be incomplete without mention of the fact that he prepared a gas by the action of nitric acid on iron, viz. nitric oxide, which, when introduced into ordinary air confined over water, decreased its volume; and he found that further admission of nitric oxide produced no further diminution in the volume of the air. A very little more, and he would have recognised in this a means of analysing air, and depriving it wholly of its oxygen. He goes so far as to speculate that a compound is formed between the nitric oxide and the oxygen, but the solubility of gases in water appears not to have struck him as important. He notices, however, that the combination of the two gases is attended by rise of temperature, and is in so far analogous to combustion.
It would lead us too far to consider in detail Mayow’s theories of fermentation and of respiration. Suffice it to say that he ascribes the production of animal heat to the consumption of his fire-air particles by the animal, and remarks that the pulse is heightened by respiration. This view was in opposition to that held by his contemporaries, viz. that the purpose of respiration was to cool the blood.
It is impossible to avoid being impressed with the clearness and justice of Mayow’s inferential reasoning. All that was wanting was the discovery of oxygen and carbon dioxide, and the identification of the first with his fire-air, and of the second with one of the products of combustion. But these discoveries were not made until a century after his death. Had he lived, there can be little doubt that, unless discouraged by the want of appreciation with which his ideas were received, he would have continued to labour in the fruitful fields from which he had already reaped so rich a harvest.
Before leaving the seventeenth century, it is perhaps fitting to mention the name of Jean Rey, a French physician, who wrote in 1630 concerning the gain in weight of tin and lead when calcined. While Rey exhibited some leaning towards the modern methods of experimentation, he still lay fettered in the bonds of mediæval scholasticism. In discussing the weight of air and fire, he finds occasion to consider the question whether a vacuum can exist. His words are so quaint that they are worth quoting: “It is quite certain that in the bounds of Nature a vacuum, which is nothing, can find no place. There is no power in Nature from which nothing could have made the universe, and none which could reduce the universe to nothing: that requires the same virtue. Now the matter would be otherwise if there could be a vacuum. For if it could be here, it could also be there; and being here and there, why not elsewhere? and why not everywhere? Thus the universe could reach annihilation by its own forces; but to Him alone who could make it is the glory of being able to compass its destruction.” And since air cannot be drawn down by a vacuum, it must descend by virtue of its own weight when it fills a hole. And hence, as air has weight, tin and lead gain in weight when they combine with air. It will be admitted that this is very inferior to the speculations and deductions of Boyle and Mayow.
The next stage in the history of our subject is the consideration of the work of Stephen Hales and of Joseph Priestley. Both of these philosophers were essentially experimentalists. While both discovered gases and prepared them in a more or less pure state, Hales had no theory to guide him, and concluded as the result of his researches that air was possessed of “a chaotic nature”; for he did not recognise his gases as different kinds of matter, but supposed them all to be modified air. Priestley, on the other hand, was an adherent of the theory of phlogiston, and interpreted all his experiments by its help. Hales was a country clergyman, interested in botany, and undertook researches on air in order to gain knowledge of the growth and development of plants. Priestley was also a divine, who amused himself with experiments during the intervals of composing sermons or writing controversial pamphlets on disputed doctrines. Both possessed the experimental faculty, and both employed it to good purpose.
Hales’ chief work is entitled “Statical Essays, containing Vegetable Staticks; or an account of Statical Experiments on the Sap in Vegetables, being an Essay towards a Natural History of Vegetation: of use to those who are curious in the Culture and Improvement of Gardening, etc.: Also, a specimen of an attempt to analyse the air by a great Variety of Chymiostatical Experiments, which were read at several meetings before the Royal Society. By Stephen Hales, D.D., F.R.S., Rector of Farringdon, Hampshire, and Minister of Teddington, Middlesex.”
In his “Introduction” Hales reveals his method of research. The determination of weight and volume was at that date especially necessary; for want of numerical data the experimental researches of the time were of a somewhat vague character, and it often happened that the conclusions drawn from them were incorrect. Hence it is with a feeling of satisfaction that we read (vol. i. p. 2):—
“And since we are assured that the all-wise Creator has observed the most exact proportions of number, weight, and measure in the make of all things, the most likely way, therefore, to get any insight into the nature of those parts of the creation which come within our observation must in all reason be to number, weigh, and measure. And we have much encouragement to pursue this method of searching into the nature of things, from the great success which has attended any attempts of this kind.” For God has “comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance.”
From experiments on the rise of sap in plants, many of them very ingenious and well adapted to secure their end, and which are still regarded by botanists as classic, Hales noticed that a quantity of air was inspired by plants. In order to ascertain the composition and amount of this air, the process of distillation was resorted to; for Hales remarks: “That elasticity is no immutable property of air is further evident from these experiments; because it were impossible for such great quantities of it to be confined in the substances of animals and vegetables, in an elastick state, without rending their constituent parts with a vast explosion” (Preface, p. viii.). Hence, concluding that the air absorbed by plants and animals could be recovered by their distillation, Hales proceeded to distil a great number of substances of animal and vegetable origin, such as hogs’ blood, tallow, a fallow-deer’s horn, oystershell, oak, wheat, peas, amber, tobacco, camphor, aniseed oil, honey, beeswax, sugar, Newcastle coal, earth, chalk, pyrites, a mixture of salt and bone-ash, of nitre and bone-ash, tartar, compound aquafortis, and a number of other substances. He collected the “air” in each case over water, and gave numerical data to show what proportion the air bore by weight to the substance from which it had been obtained. He even tried to compare the weight of ordinary air with that of air from distilled tartar; but his experiment led to no positive conclusion, because of the crudeness of his appliances. The compressibility or “elasticity” of the air from tartar, however, was found to be identical with that of common air.
Hales does not appear to have made any special experiments on the properties of his various airs, by trying whether they supported combustion, whether they were themselves combustible, etc. We see from this list that he had under his hands mixtures of hydrocarbons, carbon dioxide, probably sulphur dioxide, hydrochloric acid and ammonia (both, however, dissolving in water as they were formed), oxides of nitrogen, possibly chlorine, and, as minium or red-lead was one of the substances he tried, oxygen in a more or less pure state. It must be remembered that in all cases the gas obtained was mixed with the air originally present in the retort. He next proceeded to produce “air” by the fermentation of grain, of raisins, and of other fruits; this “air” obviously was carbon dioxide more or less pure.
It is curious to note here that he anticipated Lord Kelvin in devising a sounding-lead which should register the depth of the sea by the compression of air, the distance to which the air had receded along the tube being shown by the entry of treacle. He successfully carried out a sounding by means of his apparatus.
The next series of experiments related to the generation of “air” by the action of acids on metals. Aqua-regia and gold, aqua-regia and antimony, aquafortis and iron, dilute oil-of-vitriol and iron, yielded gases which contracted on standing in contact with water. This, in the case of the oxides of nitrogen, is to be ascribed to their reacting with the oxygen of the air accidentally present in the receiver; but in the last case Hales noticed that the gas absorbed
