‘I will, first of all, presuppose that air has weight owing to the vapours and halations which ascend from the earth and seas to a height of many miles and surround the whole of our terraqueous globe; and this fact will not be denied by philosophers, even by those who may have but a superficial knowledge, because it can be proven by exhausting, if not all, at any rate the greater part of, the air contained in a glass vessel, which, if weighed before and after the air has been exhausted, will be found materially reduced in weight. Then I found out how much the air weighed in itself in the following manner. I procured a large vessel of glass, whose neck could be closed or opened by means of a tap, and holding it open I warmed it over a fire, so that the air inside it becoming rarified, the major part was forced out; then quickly shutting the tap to prevent the re-entry I weighed it; which done, I plunged its neck in water, resting the whole of the vessel on the surface of the water, then on opening the tap the water rose in the vessel and filled the greater part of it. I lifted the neck out of the water, released the water contained in the vessel, and measured and weighed its quantity and density, by which I inferred that a certain quantity of air had come out of the vessel equal in bulk to the quantity of water which had entered to refill the portion abandoned by the air. I again weighed the vessel, after I had first of all well dried it free of all moisture, and found it weighed one ounce more whilst it was full of air than when it was exhausted of the greater part, so that what it weighed more was a quantity of air equal in volume to the water which took its place. The water weighed 640 ounces, so I concluded that the weight of air compared with that of water was 1 to 640--that is to say, as the water which filled the vessel weighed 640 ounces, so the air which filled the same vessel weighed one ounce.’ Having thus detailed the method of exhausting air from a vessel, Lana goes on to assume that any large vessel can be entirely exhausted of nearly all the air contained therein. Then he takes Euclid’s proposition to the effect that the superficial area of globes increases in the proportion of the square of the diameter, whilst the volume increases in the proportion of the cube of the same diameter, and he considers that if one only constructs the globe of thin metal, of sufficient size, and exhausts the air in the manner that he suggests, such a globe will be so far lighter than the surrounding atmosphere that it will not only rise, but will be capable of lifting weights. Here is Lana’s own way of putting it:--