the entrance into which of air from without be prevented, you will see in a short time the candle go out, nor will the animal long survive its funeral torch. Indeed, [says Mayow] I have found by observation that an animal shut up in a flask together with a candle will continue to breathe for not much more than half the time than it otherwise would, that is, without the candle.” Something contained in the air, necessary alike for supporting combustion and for sustaining life, passes from the air into the blood. Mayow expressed his thoughts in these words: “And indeed it is very probable that certain particles of a nitro-saline nature, and those very subtle, nimble, and of very great fermentative power, are separated from the air by the aid of the lungs and introduced into the mass of the blood. And so necessary for life of every kind is that aereal salt (constituent) that not even plants can grow in earth the access of air to which is shut off. But if that same earth be exposed to air and so forthwith impregnated with that fecundating salt, it at once becomes fit again for growing.”[17] Mayow fully appreciated the importance of his nitro-aereal particles in the processes of life; he had indeed a fairly accurate conception of a sound theory of animal heat; he saw that they were equally necessary for burning, or combustion, and for respiration, and so was enabled to draw a parallelism between the two processes; he pointed out that they were essential for the ordinary activity of the muscles of the body, that as muscle work was increased more particles from the air were required; indeed, he clearly foresaw the need which the body had for these igneo-aereal particles in all the chemical processes of life. And thus was foreshadowed a conception of oxidation, a hundred years before Priestley evolved his phlogiston theories and Lavoisier discovered oxygen. [17] Quoted from Foster’s Lectures, p. 195.