He can stand erect, take a deep breath, gradually exhale, slowly and smoothly saying as many letters of the alphabet as possible or counting as high as he can on a single breath.
(1) In an amazing process called photosynthesis, plants take in the carbon dioxide that we exhale, using it and the energy from sunlight to produce carbohydrates and oxygen.
“Babylon the Great has fallen, and she has become a dwelling place of demons and a lurking place of every unclean exhalation and a lurking place of every unclean and hated bird!” —Revelation 14:8; 18:2.
An 18th-century doctor recommended in his book Hermippus Redivivus that young virgins be kept in a small room in springtime and their exhalations collected in bottles and used as a life-extending potion.
In the ruins of Babylon the Great, the figurative existence of such animals, along with stagnant, poisonous air (“unclean exhalation”) and unclean birds, signifies her spiritually dead condition.