THE WONDERS OF LONDON'S AIR-BLANKET.

Bruce Herald, Volume XXXXI, Issue 78, 3 October 1905, Page 2

THE WONDERS OF LONDON'S AIR-BLANKET.

The average Londoner is painfully conscious thtt he has many heavy burdens to bear; but by far tlie heaviest cf them all seem* to escape his consciousness, because, paradoxically enough, it is the lightest to bear. The blauket of air which presses night and day on the i'oar and a half milliou people who inhabit Loudoi weighs no lead than 3,143,000,000 tons, which iB aa equivalent to an allow auco of 700 tons, or 14,000 times his own weight, to the average inhabitant. The allowance of air which London bears and breathes ia indeed so great that it would admit of c distribution to each man, womau, and child throughout the entire world of over two tons, or, roughly, forty times the weight in air of the average inhabitant. °> If it were possible to suspend iv the air all the .avies of the world, and multiply tliern five- hundred fold, the London atmosphere would outweigh them all ; ami similarly, if all the men, wopjen, aud children ou earth were placed in one pan of a. colossal pair of scales, and to them were added all the people that have ever lived since the beginning of time, they would make no impres•i'vr. whatever as counterpoise to the London atmosphere. All tbe horses in the world, supplemented by all the world's locomotives, could not move an equivalent weight; if it were possible to transport the Londoner's aerial blanket, it would take all the horsea in the United 150 days to accomplish the task, each horse removing a weight of ten tons every day. Happily, out air is » free gift to all ; for if it had to be paid for even at the rate of a penny a ton, the freehold of our atmosphere in London aloue would co&t over £13,000,000, or nearly three pounds a head for each inhabitant of London; while the gold necessary to purchase it would be as much a» four regiments of soldiers could carry with any comfort, each soldier carrying over a half -hundredweight. Tha burden of air which each Londoner is doomed to bear may be estimated from the fact that the average man carries on the top of his head alone an atmospheric burden of 1,000 pounds, a weight equivalent to that of a iuH-gnnvn h »rge. or, 'roughly, of half a dozen twelve-stona men*