When you pull the handles of a pair of bellows apart, as represented here, you make more space in the bellows, and the air rushes in to fill up this space. It is the same with breathing. When you breathe in, or draw a breath, as we say, the air goes down into your lungs through the windpipe. This is because the chest is made larger as it heaves, and so there is more room in the lungs; and the air goes in to fill up this room, just as it does in the bellows.
When the air moves very fast, it is, you know, often very inconvenient, and sometimes does much harm, as when houses are blown down, or when ships are driven upon a rocky shore. But commonly it is very accommodating. It is so easily moved out of the way that we do not think of its being in the way at all. When you are walking, your body pushes the air one way and the other, just as a man pushes persons to the one side and the other when he goes through a crowd; and as the people close up behind him as he moves along, so the air closes up behind you as you walk through it. Now, if the crowd were facing him, and should push against him, he would find it slow and hard work to get through. So, when the wind blows strongly in your face, it is hard walking, and you get along slowly, because the air presses against you so hard.
Air easily moved out of the way.
Why it is easier to walk in air than in water.
The air is pushed out of the way easily because it is so light. This is the reason that it is easier to walk in air than in water. The water, as you wade in it, is pushed to the one side and the other, as the air is when you walk in it; but it is not done so quickly and easily; and, as it is easier to walk with the wind than against it, so it is easier, in a running stream, to wade down stream than up against the current.
The air is so light a thing that you hardly think of it as pressing on any thing; but it does press on every thing. Let us see what this pressure does.
See this glass tube. It is open at the end which is in the vessel of water, but it is closed at the other end. It is full of water. But water is apt to run down whenever it can get a chance to do it. Now what makes it stay up in this tube? It is kept up by the air that presses on the water in the vessel. If you could take away the air from all about the vessel, the water in the tube would come down into the vessel, because there would be nothing there to hold it up.
