The fixed air with which our atmosphere abounds may also be supplied by volcanos, from the vast masses of calcareous matter lodged in the earth, together with inflammable air. Also a part of it may be supplied from the fermentation of vegetables upon the surface of it. At present, as fast as it is precipitated and imbibed by one process, it may be set loose by others.
Whether there be, upon, the whole, an increase or a decrease of the general mass of the atmosphere is not easy to conjecture, but I should imagine that it rather increases. It is true that many processes contribute to a great visible diminution of common air, and that when by other processes it is restored to its former wholesomeness, it is not increased in its dimensions; but volcanos and fires still supply vast quantities of air, though in a state not yet fit for respiration; and it will have been seen in my experiments, that vegetable and animal substances, dissolved by putrefaction, not only emit phlogiston, but likewise yield a considerable quantity of permanent elastic air, overloaded indeed with phlogiston, as might be expected, but capable of being purified by those processes in nature by which other noxious air is purified.
That particles are continually detaching themselves from the surfaces of all solid bodies, even the metallic ones, and that these particles constitute the most permanent part of the atmosphere, as Sir Isaac Newton supposed, does not appear to me to be at all probable.
My readers will have observed, that not only is common air liable to be diminished by a mixture of nitrous air, but likewise air originally produced from inflammable air, and even from nitrous air itself, which never contained any fixed air. From this it may be inferred, that the whole of the diminution of common air by phlogiston is not owing to the precipitation of fixed air, but from a real contraction of its dimensions, in consequence of its union with phlogiston. Perhaps an accurate attention to the specific gravity of air procured from these different materials, and in these different states, may determine this matter, and assist us in investigating the nature of phlogiston.
In what _manner_ air is diminished by phlogiston, independent of the precipitation of any of its constituent parts, is not easy to conceive; unless air thus diminished be heavier than air not diminished, which I did not find to be the case. It deserves, however, to be tried with more attention. That phlogiston should communicate absolute _levity_ to the bodies with which it is combined, is a supposition that I am not willing to have recourse to, though it would afford an easy solution of this difficulty.