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⁠SIR,

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I Cannot forbear any longer to address one of the Volumes of these Transactions to You, to whom I most willingly profess I am sincerely devoted, and who is known to have obliged the leaned World with so many uncommon Discoveries in Nature, and solidly maintain'd the Power and Usefulness of Experimental Philosophy. And this I do by offering you this Volume, because in it (besides other parcels of not ordinary remark elsewhere interspersed) two of the Twelve Tracts are almost entirely your own; of which the judicious do generally affirm, that though they are draughts written only for your own memory, and have not yet the polishing of your last hand, yet they contain most diving Researches into some of the deepest Recesses of Nature, that ever appear'd in Publick; and have most industriously examin'd the Breath and Fuel of Life; the State of Air, and Water,in