“Thus, upon the whole, we see that air abounds in animal, vegetable, and mineral substances; in all which it bears a considerable part; if all the parts of matter were only endued with a strongly attracting power, whole nature would then immediately become one unactive cohering lump; wherefore it was absolutely necessary, in order to the actuating and enlivening this vast mass of attracting matter, that there should be everywhere intermix’d with it a due proportion of strongly repelling elastick particles, which might enliven the whole mass, by the incessant action between them and the attracting particles; and since these elastick particles are continually in great abundance reduced by the power of the strong attracters, from an elastick to a fixt state, it was therefore necessary that these particles should be endued with a property of resuming their elastick state, whenever they were disengaged from that mass in which they were fixt, that thereby this beautiful frame of things might be maintained in a continual round of the production and dissolution of animal and vegetable bodies. “The air is very instrumental in the production and growth of animals and vegetables, both by invigorating their several juices while in an elastick active state, and also by greatly contributing in a fix’d state to the union and firm connection of several constituent parts of those bodies, viz. their water, salt, sulphur, and earth. This band of union, in conjunction with the external air, is also a very powerful agent in the dissolution and corruption of the same bodies; for it makes one in every fermenting mixture; the action and re-action of the aerial and sulphureous particles is, in many fermenting mixtures, so great as to excite a burning heat, and in others a sudden flame; and it is, we see, by the like action and re-action of the same principles, in fuel and the ambient air, that common culinary fires are produced and maintained.