GO Mr. C. J. Burnett on several Forms of Actinometer. 



corresponding latitude in the two hemispheres ; (2) in countries 

 in the same latitude but differing in climate, e. g. in America and 

 in Europe, and generally on the opposite sides of continents, 

 and on sea contrasted with land j at sea in the trade- wind belt 

 and in the variables, &c. ; in our own country, on the west 

 coast as contrasted with the east ; on the sea coast, and inland ; 

 amidst vegetable life, and away from it, and the latter especially as 

 connected with the disease known as " hay fever/' possibly pro- 

 duced by the abundance of ozone or some imponderable, or wave- 

 power, disengaged by vegetation during what we may call the 

 phytolysis* of carbonic acid — the supposition of such injurious 

 effect, on persons exceptionally constituted, of allotropic oxygen 

 or some unrecognized wave-power or imponderable or other 

 agent disengaged or produced by vegetation being no way in- 

 consistent with the belief that this same liberation or production 

 is, in general, importantly or essentially conducive to the puri- 

 fication and salubrity both of our own atmosphere and of that 

 watery one in which organic impurities would have a still greater 

 tendency to accumulate; (3) at different elevations in the same 

 latitude and country, either on mountains or, occasionally, in 

 balloons. 



Such observations would be likely f to help us to a somewhat 

 less utterly hazy idea than what we have as to what constitutes 

 climate, and what is the nature of its action on vegetable, and 

 what on animal life. Why does a plant or animal thrive in one 

 country and languish or die in another, where there are not 

 sufficient differences of soil, moisture, or temperature to account 

 for the difference between life and death, luxuriance or lan- 

 guishing ? 



* Phytactinolysis would be unnecessarily clumsy, and actinolysis I 

 would reserve for the numerous cases where actinism acts without the pre- 

 sence or aid of vegetable or other life. 



t There are many other considerations, however (as to probable actions 

 of soil, &c. on the air), to be taken into account. Is the very remarkable 

 and well-ascertained difference in sanitary properties between the air of the 

 Egyptian valley and that of the immediately adjoining portions of the desert 

 in any degree owing to this, or to the effect of vegetation ? It would seem, 

 also, in the absence of any other probable cause yet given, deserving of 

 investigation whether the remarkable properties of the well-known desert 

 simoom may not be owing to allotropic action, to wave-powers, or impon- 

 derables connected either with chemical actions, or with friction between 

 the sand and the air at certain temperatures : and why may not other in- 

 fluential powers as well as heat, light, and electricity be disengaged by 

 the friction of bodies? and why may not the necessary accompaniments 

 and circumstances be as peculiar as they often are with relative electricity ? 



