184 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCO VEEY. 



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together with ordinary oxygen, when peroxide of barium is decom- 

 posed by sulphuric acid at ordinary temperatures. The spontaneous 

 decomposition of a solution of permanganic acid also evolves a simi- 

 lar product, having the characters of ozor.e. 



Believing that the nitrous acid, in the above experiments, is not an 

 accidental product of electric or catalytic action, but dependent upon 

 the formation of active or nascent oxygen, I caused a current of air 

 to pass through a solution of permanganate of potash mixed with 

 sulphuric acid. The air, which had thus acquired the odor and other 

 reactions of ozone, was then passed through a solution of potash ; by 

 which process it lost its peculiar properties, while the potash solution 

 was found to contain a salt having the reactions of a nitrite. 



As I suggested in this Journal in 1848, I conceive gaseous nitrogen 

 to be the anhydrid amid or nitryl of nitrous acid ; which in contact 

 with water might, under certain circumstances, generate nitrous acid 

 and ammonia. From the instability of the compound of these two 

 bodies, however, it becomes necessary to decompose one at the instant 

 of its formation, in order to isolate the other. Certain reducing agents 

 which convert nitrous acid into ammonia may thus transform nitrogen 

 (NN) into 2NH 3 . In this way I explain the action of nascent hydro- 

 gen in forming ammonia with atmospheric nitrogen, in presence of 

 oxidizing metals and alkalies. (Zinc, in presence of a heated solution 

 of potash, readily reduces nitrates and nitrites with the evolution of 

 ammonia.) 



Now an agent which, instead of attacking the nitrous acid, would 

 destroy the newly-formed ammonia, would permit us to isolate the 

 nitrous acid. Houzeau has shown that nascent oxygen is M"-h an 

 agent, at once oxidizing ammonia with formation of nitrate (nitrite ?) 

 of ammonia, and thus, when ozone (nascent oxygen) is brought into 

 contact with moist air, both of the atoms of nitrogen in the nitryl 

 (NN) appear in the oxidized state. 



From this view it follows that the odor and most of the reactions 

 ascribed to ozone are due to nitrous acid, which is liberated by the 

 decomposition of atmospheric nitrogen in presence of water and 

 nascent oxygen. We have thus a key to a new theory of nitrification, 

 and an explanation of the experiments of Cloez on the slow forma- 

 tion of nitrite by the action of air, exempt from ammonia, upon porous 

 bodies, moistened with alkaline solutions. 



THE USE OF OZONE AS A BLEACHING AGENT. 



According to M. Gorup-Besanez, ozone, when properly applied, is 

 a most effective and convenient agent for restoring books or prints 

 which have become brown by age, or been soiled'or smeared with 

 coloring matter ; only a short time being required to render them 

 perfectly white, as if just from the press, and this without injuring in 

 the least the blackness of the printer's ink or the lines of crayon 

 drawing. 



As examples of his results, the author mentions a book of the 

 sixteenth century, upon a page of which several sentences had been 

 painted over, by the monks of that epoch, with a black, shining color- 

 ing matter, in order to render them illegible, and of which no trace 



