Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 August 1879 — Bottling Air. [ARTICLE]

Bottling Air.

During the Centennial summer samples of air were collected on various occasions upon the exhibition grounds at Philadelphia, and in different buildings; also in this city, in Brooklyn, Hoboken, and on many of the Adirondack mountains, with a view of transmitting them to the chemists of 1976, to determine whether the path’s atmosphere is undergoing change. That the atmosphere has undergone enormous changes since the earlier geographical ages, is beyond a doubt. The present question is whether such changes are still slowly going on, and what their nature may be. The ordinary statement that the air has an invariable composition is not strictly true, since samples of air collected at different times and in different places are never found to be absolutely identical. The difference may be slight; but an apparently insignificant decrease in the percentage of oxygen became of grave importance when the deficiency, as is usually the case, is made up of less beneficial elements. —Scietdijic American.