46 Prof. Clausiu.s on the Nature uj Ozone. 



modification of oxygen. While, namely, ozone exerts a strong 

 oxidizing action upon oxidizablc bodies, and even upon the noble 

 metals, nevertheless Sclionbeiu has found that strips of paper, 

 coloured with peroxide of lead, become bleached when intro- 

 duced in a moist condition into strongly ozonified air, owing to 

 the reduction of the peroxide into the protoxide of lead. Such 

 reduction Schonbein has shown in another place to be accom- 

 panied with a destruction of the ozone, that is, its conversion into 

 ordinary oxygen. 



This communication confirmed me in the view which I had 

 previously entertained concerning the nature of ozone ; and I 

 therefore trust 1 may be allowed now to bring forward my view 

 as a hypothesis. 



In my paper "On the Nature of the Motion which we call 

 Heat*," I have endeavoured to explain the relations which exist 

 between the volumes of simple and compound gases by the assump- 

 tion that in simple gases, as well as in compound ones, more than 

 one atom are combined together to form a molecule ; that, for 

 instance, a molecule of oxygen consists of two atoms f. I 

 believe now that, under peculiar circumstances, it may happen 

 that a small portion of the great number of molecules which 

 exist in a given quantity of oxygen may be decomposed into two 

 atoms, which then distribute themselves in the separate state 

 among the remaining uudecomposed molecules. These isolated 



* Phil. Mag. [4] vol. xiv. p. 108. 



t Appended to an abstract of this paper in the Annales de Chimie et de 

 "Physique, M\([ to a translation of it in i\\e Archives des Sciences Pliys.et Nat., 

 are some remarks by MM. Verdet and Marignae, pointing out that the 

 idea that even, in simple gases the molecules are composed of more than one 

 atom, had been already advanced by Dumas, Laurent and Gerhardt ; a 

 fact with which I was not then acquainted. Gerhardt has developed his 

 theoretical views principally in the second half of the fourth volume of his 

 ' Organic Chemistry.' These portions of his work were not yet published 

 in the German translation by Wagner when my paper appeared ; indeed, 

 the last sections are not published. Inasmuch, therefore, as the French 

 original is not at my command, I have hitherto been only able to read the 

 first part of Gerhardt's theoretical views. I have there certainly found that 

 Gerhardt has, from totally different, purely chemical considerations, arrived 

 at the conclusion, that free hydrogen and free chlorine should be viewed as 

 hydride of hydrogen and chloride of chlorine (H, H and CI, CI). Also of 

 oxygen it is said, that a molecule consists of several (at least two) atoms 

 (vol. iv. p. G12). I have not yet been able to obtain the works of Dumas and 

 Laurent, but I do not doubt that they contain similar ideas. It has been 

 very gratifying to me to have been made acquainted with the existence of 

 these theoretical views by the above-mentioned remarks. For although it 

 follows that my hypothesis is not so original as I imagined, yet I can feel 

 nothing but pleasure in seeing my ideas thus coincide with those of such 

 excellent investigators ; especially on a subject which, on the one hand, 

 extends into so many provinces of science, that the same result may be 

 arrived at by many different ways, and which, on the other hand, is still of 

 so hypothetical a uature that every confirmation of a result is desirable. 



