Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 543 



is merely allotropic oxj'gen, there cannot be any danger of errone- 

 ous impressions being formed as to the nature of the body, from the 

 use of the name hitherto employed, to which I shall therefore 

 adhere until a better one than that proposed by these gentlemen is 

 found. Although the experiments of MM. Becquerel and Fremy 

 have nut taught us anything essentially new, still some of their 

 statements have a peculiar interest ; for instance, the circumstance 

 that ozone is produced even in a closed glass tube, filled with 

 oxygen, when electrical discharges are allowed to strike ujion its 

 exterior. The production of ozone is here evidently the result of an 

 electrical induction in the oxygen from the exterior and through the 

 glass. A similar induction takes place on a large scale on the 

 occasion of every flash of lightning, a very striking instance of 

 which I had once an opportunity of observing. So.-ne years since a 

 small chapel on the Riiine-bridge at Basle was struck by lightning. 

 All the rooms in my house, which is about a hundred paces distant, 

 were filled with a strong odour of ozone at the moment of discharge, 

 and the same was the case in all the neighbouring houses, so that 

 the inhabitants of each imagined that their own dwelling had been 

 struck by the lightning. It is also deserving of especial notice, that 

 the smell of ozone was perceived in rooms which were closed, as 

 well as in those which were in connexion with the exterior atmo- 

 sphere. This appeared to me to prove satisfactorily that the ozone 

 was not carried into these houses by currents of air from the place of 

 the discharge, but was actually produced in them by induction, and 

 I have no reason now to consider that this view was incorrect ; in- 

 deed it is precisely the same fact upon a large scale which the 

 French physicists have observed on a small one. 



M. de la Rive, in speaking of the investigations of MM. Bec- 

 querel and Fremy, puts forward a new hypothesis for the explana- 

 tion of the alteration effected in oxygen by means of electricity, &c. 

 He is of opinion that in ordinary oxygen the atoms are not separate, 

 but combined in groups forming molecules. Since, in the chemical 

 combination of bodies, the atoms unite in single pairs, the cohesion 

 of the atoms forming a molecule of oxygen would oppose their che- 

 mical combination with the atoms of other substances, and thus 

 account for the chemical inactivity which oxygen manifests under 

 ordinary circumstances towards other bodies. He regards i)hospho- 

 rus, electricity, &c. as possessing the power of breaking up the 

 molecules of oxygen into separate atoms, on account of which its 

 chemical activity is increased, and it is rendered capable of oxidizing 

 bodies at the ordinary temperature. 



According to this view, ozone must be considered as atomic and 

 oxygen as molecular oxygen. However comprehensible this hypo- 

 thesis may be, I cannot avoid some hesitation in giving my assent 

 to it. 



1. We must, if we adopt it, regard ordinary oxygen as a body 

 which is at the same time both solid and fluid. The molecules must 

 be regarded as solid, inasmuch as they arc supj)oscd to be formed 



