Excerpt from The Atmosphere in Relation to Human Life and Health

Uninterrupted by emergent continents and islands, the atmosphere freely spreads high above all mountains and ¿ows ever in mighty cur rents at levels beyond the most elevated regions of the solid earth. What is the composition of this encompassing ¿uid, and what its char acter! The work of the present century has gathered in a rich store of knowledge to answer the inquiry.

The atmosphere consists in the main of two gases, oxygen and nitro gen, and these are intimately mixed in the proportion of about of oxygen to of nitrogen by volume, and of oxygen to of nitrogen by weight. 2 These gases, which are each of them chemical ele ments, are not chemically combined with one another, but only mixed, each preserves its qualities, modified only by solution in the other. Gases have the property of diffusing among each other so completely, that no portion which could be conveniently taken. However small, would fail to represent the two gases in a proportion corresponding with that which they maintain in the whole atmosphere.

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