It seems clear to us that the one method of proving the accuracy of Mayow's supposition must be, to weigh a definite, combustible, substance--say, a metal; to calcine this in a measured quantity of air; to weigh the product, and to measure the quantity of air which remains; to separate the product of calcination into the original metal, and a kind of air or gas; to prove that the metal thus obtained is the same, and has the same weight, as the metal which was calcined; and to prove that the air or gas obtained from the calcined metal is the same, both in quality and quantity, as the air which disappeared in the process of calcination.
This proof was not forthcoming until about a century after the publication of Mayow's work.

The experiments which furnished the proof were rendered possible by a notable discovery made on the 1st of August 1774, by the celebrated Joseph Priestley.
Priestley prepared many "airs" of different kinds: by the actions of acids on metals, by allowing vegetables to decay, by heating beef, mutton, and other animal substances, and by other methods.

He says: "Having procured a lens of twelve inches diameter and twenty inches focal distance, I proceeded with great alacrity to examine, by the help of it, what kind of air a great variety of substances, natural and factitious, would yield....

With this apparatus, after a variety of other experiments....

on the 1st of August, 1774, I endeavoured to extract air from _mercurius calcinatus per se_; and I presently found that, by means of this lens, air was expelled from it very readily.
Having got about three or four times as much as the bulk of my materials, I admitted water to it, and found that it was not imbibed by it.