102 REPORT—1845. 
blood. Wherever that carbonic acid may be produced, certain it is that the 
carbon required for its production comes from the body, and that the oxida- 
tion of that element takes place at a temperature at which carbon, being in a 
free state, does not combine with oxygen. From the large quantities of carbonic 
acid produced during the respiration of an,animal, and the minute quantities 
of free ozone inhaled, it appears that that carbonic acid cannot be engendered 
by atmospheric ozone. May we be allowed to suppose that blood being 
put in contact with atmospheric oxygen acts upon the latter as phosphorus 
does upon the same oxygen? Is it perhaps to ozone being formed in the 
way alluded to that the carbonic acid breathed out owes its origin? May 
we compare, in a chemical point of view, phosphorus placed in atmospheric 
air to an animal breathing in the same air? Strangely as these questions 
may sound, we can hardly help putting them, after having discovered in 
ozone so powerful an oxidizing agent, and found in phosphorus so remark- 
able a means to produce it. 
In spite of the floods of light which recent chemical and physiological re- 
searches have thrown upon the function of respiration, we are still very far 
from understanding thoroughly that phenomenon, and for that very reason 
every fact which promises to unveil further that mystery is, in my opinion, 
highly worthy of all the attention both of physiologists and chemical philo- 
sophers. And as the subject I have treated of is such as to remind, as it 
were of itself, of its possible bearings to respiration, I think it will not be left 
entirely unnoticed. 
Considering the great importance of the part which the atmosphere acts 
in different departments of organic and inorganic nature, it is very desirable 
that it should become more and more the subject of the most careful and ex- 
tensive researches, and that chemists in particular should direct their atten- 
tion to those phenomena which take place in atmospheric air, or are depen- 
dent upon the latter; for much as modern science has done in that field of 
inquiry, it cannot be denied that the greatest mysteries are yet to be unveiled 
in it. Holding the opinion that the extraordinary action which phosphorus 
exerts upon atmospheric air discloses to us a fundamental phenomenon, I 
am inclined to believe that that action, once fully understood, will give us 
an insight into the cause of a series of phenomena which at this present 
moment are yet enveloped in utter darkness. 
On the Influence of Friction upon Thermo-electricity. 
By Pauu Erman of Berlin. 
[A communication read to the Mathematical and Physical Section, and ordered to be printed 
entire amongst the Reports. ] 
Are the forces that govern the interior constitution of bodies wo in number, 
and essentially distinct; or do the effects usually called chemical, proceed 
from the same cause as those to which we give the appellation of mechanical ? 
The future progress of science depends on the solution of this problem, which 
the recent development of physics has brought almost entirely within the 
province of electricity. In this province, the two schools, the chemical and 
the contact of theorists, rival each other in the sagacity and energy they 
display in the defence of their tenets. Let us indicate however a strategical 
position, the importance of which the contact party do not appear to have 
sufficiently seized. Friction is merely a repeated molecular contact, so that 
the mathematical expression of its effects would perhaps only consist in higher 
