(20.)

The atmosphere is the thin, transparent, colourless, and therefore invisible, fluid in which we live and move, which by respiration sustains animal life, and is otherwise connected with various important functions of organised matter. This fluid is so light and attenuated, that it might at first be doubted whether it be really a body at all; and, indeed, the name expressing incorporeal beings, spirit, is a word in its origin signifying air.[5] The air, however, is light only as compared with other material substances, which exist in a more condensed state: it possesses the quality of weight as absolutely as the most solid and massive bodies in nature, and to render this quality manifest, it is only necessary to submit a sufficient quantity of air to any of the usual tests of gravitation. [Pg039]

A direct demonstration of this may be given by the following experiment:—On the mouth of a flask let a stop-cock be fastened so as to be air-tight. The interior of the flask may then be put into free communication with the external air, or that communication may be cut off at pleasure, by opening or closing the stop-cock. If a syringe be applied to the mouth of the flask, the stop-cock being open a part of the air contained in it may be drawn out. After this, the stop-cock being closed, and the syringe detached, let the flask be placed in the dish of a good balance, and accurately counterpoised by weights in the other dish. This counterpoise will then represent the weight of the flask, and of the air which has remained in it. If the stop-cock be now opened, air will immediately rush in, and replace that which the syringe had withdrawn from the flask; and immediately the dish of the balance containing the flask will sink by the effect of the weight of the air thus admitted into the flask.

If the weight of quantity of air so small as to be capable of being withdrawn by a syringe from an ordinary flask be thus of sensible amount, it may be easily imagined that the vast mass of atmosphere extending from the surface of the earth upwards, to a height not ascertained with precision, but certainly not being less than thirty miles, must be very considerable. Such a force, pressing as it must constantly do, upon the surfaces of all bodies, whether solid or fluid, and resisting and modifying their movements, would play an important part in all mechanical phenomena; and it is, therefore, not sufficient merely to have recognised its existence, but it is most needful to measure its amount with that degree of certainty and precision, which will enable us to estimate its effects on those phenomena which we shall have to investigate.