He proceeds to state his imperfect attempts to procure air from water by freezing, until he procured cylindrical iron vessels seven or eight inches high and near three inches wide at the bottom, the upper orifice closed with a cork and cement, in the centre of which was a glass tube about one fifteenth of an inch in diameter. In this apparatus the water in the iron vessel was frozen by means of snow and salt, the vessel being immersed in mercury, and the water contained over the mercury. The quantity of water was about three ounces. The experiment was repeated nine times without changing the water, and the last portion of air procured in this manner was as great as any of the preceding; so that there remained no reasonable doubt but that air might be produced from the same water in this manner ad libitum. Having obtained near two inches of air in the glass tube, Dr. Priestley put an end to the experiment, and examining the air found it wholly phlogisticated, not being affected by nitrous air, and having nothing inflammable in it. The inference drawn by the Doctor from those experiments is, that water when reduced by _any means_ into the state of vapour, is in part converted into phlogisticated air; and this is one of the methods provided by nature for keeping up the equilibrium of the atmosphere, as the influence of light on growing vegetables is the means of recruiting the other part; both of them being subject to absorption and diminution in several natural processes. And he thinks that they strengthen also the opinion, that water is the basis of every kind of air, instead of being itself a compound of hydrogen and oxygen according to the new theory. At all events the experiments themselves must be considered as extremely curious, as well as new.