“Though this experiment failed,” he says, “I have been so happy as by accident to have hit upon a method of restoring air which has been injured by the burning of candles, and to have discovered at least one of the restoratives which Nature employs for this purpose. It is vegetation. This restoration of vitiated air, I conjecture, is effected by plants imbibing the phlogistic matter with which it is overloaded by the burning of inflammable bodies. But whether there be any foundation for this conjecture or not, the fact is, I think, indisputable.”
He then proceeds to give an account of his observations on the growing of plants in confined air which led to his discovery.
“One might have imagined,” he says, “that since common air is necessary to vegetable as well as to animal life, both plants and animals had affected it in the same manner; and I own I had that expectation when I first put a sprig of mint into a glass jar standing inverted in a vessel of water: but when it had continued there for some months I found the air would neither extinguish the candle, nor was it at all inconvenient to a mouse, which I put into it.... Finding that candles would burn very well in air in which plants had grown a long time, and having had some reason to think that there was something attending vegetation which restored air that had been injured by respiration, I thought it was possible that the same process might also restore the air that had been injured by the burning of candles.
“Accordingly, on the 17th of August 1771, I put a sprig of mint into a quantity of air in which a wax candle had burned out, and found that on the 27th of the same month another candle burned perfectly well in it. This experiment I repeated, without the least variation in the event, not less than eight or ten times in the remainder of the summer.
“Several times I divided the quantity of air in which the candle had burned out into two parts, and putting the plant into one of them left the other in the same exposure, contained also in a glass vessel immersed in water, but without any plant, and never failed to find that a candle would burn in the former but not in the latter.... This remarkable effect does not depend upon anything peculiar to mint, which was the plant that I always made use of till July 1772; for on the 16th of that month I found a quantity of this kind of air to be perfectly restored by sprigs of balm, which had grown in it from the 7th of the same month.
“That this restoration of air was not owing to any aromatic effluvia of these two plants not only appeared by the essential oil of mint having no sensible effect of this kind, but from the equally complete restoration of this vitiated air by the plant called groundsel, which is usually ranked among the weeds and has an offensive smell. Besides, the plant which I have found to be the most effectual of any that I have tried for this purpose is spinach, which is of quick growth, but will seldom thrive long in water.”
The next paper on “Inflammable Air” is of slight importance, and indeed is full of errors. Priestley made no distinction between the inflammable air obtained by the action of acids on metals (hydrogen) and that formed by the destructive distillation of coal and other organic substances (marsh gas or carbonic oxide, or mixtures of the two), and his inability to distinguish these different gases accounts for many of the phenomena he observed and which he confesses himself unable to explain. The most sagacious observation in the memoir has reference to the colour of the electric spark in the different gases which he accurately describes.
The paper on “Air Infected with Animal Respiration or Putrefection” may be considered as the complement of that on “Air in which a Candle has burned out,” and is no less valuable.
“That candles will burn only a certain time in a given quantity of air is a fact not better known than it is that animals can live only a certain time in it; but the cause of the death of the animal is not better known than that of the extinction of flame in the same circumstances; and when once any quantity of air has been rendered noxious by animals breathing in it as long as they could, I do not know that any methods have been discovered of rendering it fit for breathing again. It is evident, however, that there must be some provision in Nature for this purpose, as well as for that of rendering the air fit for sustaining flame; for without it the whole mass of the atmosphere would, in time, become unfit for the purpose of animal life; and yet there is no reason to think that it is, at present, at all less fit for respiration than it has ever been. I flatter myself, however, that I have hit upon two of the methods employed by Nature for this great purpose. How many others there may be I cannot tell.”
One of these methods he eventually finds to be, as in the first case, the action of vegetation, and he proves by a number of decisive experiments
“that plants, instead of affecting the air in the same manner with animal respiration, reverse the effects of breathing and tend to keep the atmosphere sweet and wholesome when it is become noxious in consequence of animals either living and breathing, or dying and putrefying in it.”
The other method he conceived to be the action of water, since he found that by vigorous agitation with water, air which breathing had rendered noxious could again be breathed for a further period.
“I do not think it improbable but that the agitation of the sea and large lakes may be of some use for the purification of the atmosphere, and the putrid matter contained in water may be imbibed by aquatic plants, or be deposited in some other manner.”