A very striking experiment illustrating the pressure of the air was made by a famous contemporary of Boyle and Mariotte, by the name of Otto von Guericke. He connected an air pump with a large brass sphere, composed of two hemispheres, the edges of which fitted smoothly, but were not connected by any mechanism. Under ordinary conditions the hemispheres would fall apart readily, but von Guericke proved, by a famous public demonstration, that when the air was exhausted in the sphere, teams of horses pulling in opposite directions on the hemispheres could not separate them. This is famous as the experiment of the Magdeburg spheres, and it is often repeated on a smaller scale in the modern physical laboratory, to the astonishment of the tyro in physical experiments. The first question that usually comes to the mind of anyone who has personally witnessed such an experiment, is the question as to how the human body can withstand the tremendous force to which it is subjected by an atmosphere exerting a pressure of fifteen pounds on every square inch of its surface. The explanation is found in the uniform distribution of the pressure, the influence of which is thus counteracted, and by the fact that the tissues themselves contain everywhere a certain amount of air at the same pressure. The familiar experiment of holding the hand over an exhausted glass cylinder--which experiment is indeed but a modification of the use of the cupping glass above referred to--illustrates very forcibly the insupportable difficulties which the human body would encounter were not its entire surface uniformly subjected to the atmospheric pressure. AIR IN MOTION At about the time when the scientific experiments with the pressure of gases were being made, practical studies of the effects of masses of air in motion were undertaken by the Dutch philosopher, Servinus. The use of the windmill in Holland as a means of generating power doubtless suggested to Servinus the possibility of attaching a sail to a land vehicle. He made the experiment, and in the year 1600 constructed a sailing car which, propelled by the wind, traversed the land to a considerable distance, on one occasion conveying a company of which Prince Maurice of Orange was a member. But his experiments have seldom been repeated, and indeed their lack of practical feasibility scarcely needs demonstration.