Now, this action of the _menstruum_, or
_Air_, on the dissoluble parts, is made with such violence, or is such,
that it imparts such a motion or pulse to the _diaphanous_ parts of the
Air, as I have elsewhere shewn is requisite to produce light.
This _Hypothesis_ I have endeavoured to raise from an Infinite of
Observations and Experiments, the process of which would be much too long
to be here inserted, and will perhaps another time afford matter copious
enough for a much larger Discourse, the Air being a Subject which (though
all the world has hitherto liv'd and breath'd in, and been unconversant
about) has yet been so little truly examin'd or explain'd, that a diligent
enquirer will be able to find but very little information from what has
been (till of late) written of it: But being once well understood, it will,
I doubt not, inable a man to render an intelligible, nay probable, if not
the true reason of all the _Phaenomena_ of Fire, which, as it has been
found by Writers and Philosophers of all Ages a matter of no small
difficulty, as may be sufficiently understood by their strange
_Hypotheses_, and unintelligible Solutions of some few _Phaenomena_ of it;
so will it prove a matter of no small concern and use in humane affairs, as
I shall elsewhere endeavour to manifest when I come to shew the use of the
Air in respiration, and for the preservation of the life, nay, for the
conservation and restauration of the health and natural constitution of
mankind as well as all other aereal _animals_, as also the uses of this
principle or propriety of the Air in chymical, mechanical, and other
operations.
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