latter out into the atmosphere, and there would be also the advantage of avoiding the use of a refrigerant, which is not always available, but it would be requisite that the increase of the volume of the air should not reduce its pressure below that of the atmosphere.
(5) One of the gravest inconveniences of steam is that it cannot be used at high temperatures without necessitating the use of vessels of extraordinary strength. It is not so with air for which there exists no necessary relation between the elastic force and the temperature. Air, then, would seem more suitable than steam to realize the motive power of falls of caloric from high temperatures. Perhaps in low temperatures steam may be more convenient. We might conceive even the possibility of making the same heat act successively upon air and vapor of water. It would be only necessary that the air should have, after its use, an elevated temperature, and instead of throwing it out immediately into the atmosphere, to make it envelop a steam-boiler, as if it issued directly from a furnace.
The use of atmospheric air for the development of the motive power of heat presents in practice very great, but perhaps not insurmountable, difficulties. If we should succeed in overcoming them,
