We have made a tolerably accurate table of weight, in which we have selected the weights and size of all the metals, the principal minerals, stones, liquids, oils, and many other natural and artificial bodies: a very useful proceeding both as regards theory and practice, and which is capable of revealing many unexpected results. Nor is this of little consequence, that it serves to demonstrate that the whole range of the variety of tangible bodies with which we are acquainted (we mean tolerably close, and not spongy, hollow bodies, which are for a considerable part filled with air), does not exceed the ratio of one to twenty-one. So limited is nature, or at least that part of it to which we are most habituated. We have also thought it deserving our industry, to try if we could arrive at the ratio of intangible or pneumatic bodies to tangible bodies, which we attempted by the following contrivance. We took a vial capable of containing about an ounce, using a small vessel in order to effect the subsequent evaporation with less heat. We filled this vial, almost to the neck, with spirits of wine, selecting it as the tangible body which, by our table, was the rarest, and contained a less quantity of matter in a given space than all other tangible bodies which are compact and not hollow. Then we noted exactly the weight of the liquid and vial. We next took a bladder, containing about two pints, and squeezed all the air out of it, as completely as possible, and until the sides of the bladder met. We first, however, rubbed the bladder gently with oil, so as to make it air-tight, by closing its pores with the oil. We tied the bladder tightly round the mouth of the vial, which we had inserted in it, and with a piece of waxed thread to make it fit better and more tightly, and then placed the vial on some hot coals in a brazier. The vapor or steam of the spirit, dilated and become aëriform by the heat, gradually swelled out the bladder, and stretched it in every direction like a sail. As soon as that was accomplished, we removed the vial from the fire and placed it on a carpet, that it might not be cracked by the cold; we also pricked the bladder immediately, that the steam might not return to a liquid state by the cessation of heat, and confound the proportions. We then removed the bladder, and again took the weight of the spirit which remained; and so calculated the quantity which had been converted into vapor, or an aëriform shape, and then examined how much space had been occupied by the body in its form of spirits of wine in the vial, and how much, on the other hand, had been occupied by it in its aëriform shape in the bladder, and subtracted the results; from which it was clear that the body, thus converted and changed, acquired an expansion of one hundred times beyond its former bulk.