xlvi GENERAL SUMMARY OF SCIENTIFIC AND 



this gas is collected over water ; (2) that this loss which is 

 the greater the longer the two are in contact is not due 

 either to an absorption of the ozone by the water, or to an 

 oxidation of the latter to hydrogen peroxide ; (3) that contact 

 with water converts ozone into ordinary oxygen ; and (4) that 

 this conversion is accompanied by an expansion of volume, 

 the increase being the same with that calculated from the ab- 

 sorption of ozone by potassium iodide. He also asserts that 

 ozone is capable, in presence of water, of oxidizing nitrogen. 

 Carius, in a later research, while confirming essentially 

 Schone's results, denies that nitrogen is directly oxidized 

 by ozone, although he found nitric acid in water into which 

 ozonized air had been passed. He was not able to determine 

 accurately the absorption co-efficient of ozone in water, though 

 he states that approximately water dissolves its own volume 

 of ozone. 



Gernez has made the curious observation that from a 

 supersaturated solution of sulphur in benzol either prismat- 

 ic or octahedral crystals may be caused to separate, even 

 at the same temperature, simply by introducing a crystal of 

 the form desired. Indeed, if excess of the octahedral form 

 be left in the tube, that form on cooling will crystallize in 

 contact with the solid mass, while the other form may be 

 obtained out of the same solution at the same time by the 

 introduction of a prismatic crystal. Michaelis and Wagner 

 have thrown some light on the constitution of sulphurous 

 acid and sulphites and therefore indirectly upon the equiv- 

 alence of sulphur in this form of combination by showing 

 that this acid has not the constitution ascribed to it by 

 Strecker, viz., H.S0 2 .OH, but that it is HO.SO.OH. In the 

 former formula the hydrogen atoms have unlike positions, 

 and two isomers are possible, except where both are replaced 

 by the same radical. Only two bodies of the composition 

 (C 2 H 5 ) 2 S0 3 are known : one, produced by acting on ethyl sul- 

 phon-chloride with sodium ethylate, must have the composi- 

 tion C 2 H 5 .S0 2 .OC 2 H 5 ; the other, the ordinary ethyl-sulphite, 

 must necessarily have the formula C 2 H 5 O.SO.OC 2 H 5 . Hence 

 sulphur is a tetrad in the sulphites. Boussingault, in an 

 elaborate paper on the acid waters of the Cordilleras, gives 

 analyses of the water of the Rio Vinagre, which contains 

 0.057 gramme of free sulphuric acid in one litre, and of that 



