MOON, RECENT OBSERVATIONS AND STUDY OF THE. 



583 



the vapory mass, until some solid masses would 

 begin to aggregate there, whose mutual attrac- 

 tions would draw them together ; the mass 

 meanwhile assuming the contour of a globe, 

 and becoming a single center of attraction for 

 the still condensing forms of matter about it. 

 And when its primary had assembled upon its 

 surface the rest of the oxidized forms of mat- 

 ter and become a world, it would be found 

 with its own enveloping atmosphere pendent in 

 that of its primary, and in that cometic sys- 

 tem two comets would have appeared instead 

 of one, presenting phenomena analogous to 

 that exhibited by Biela's comet. 



If this occurred at a certain stage of develop- 

 ment of the comet's history, the secondary 

 body would remain permanent; but if, in its 

 next return to perihelion, it was carried so 

 near to the source of heat as to be again vapor- 

 ized, such a secondary assemblage of matter 

 might not occur again in the same system. 



That the moon is a mass of oxidized elements 

 of matter, there can be little doubt when we 

 consider the meteorological phenomena pre- 

 sented by that body. We are called upon to 

 believe, by men assuming to be authorities up- 

 on that subject, that our moon has no atmos- 

 phere because no clouds appear upon her sur- 

 face ; and yet, when the earth's atmosphere is 

 clear of clouds over large areas, no one would 

 think of asserting that the atmosphere had 

 moved away from these localities. It seems 

 evident that a celestial globe may possess an 

 atmosphere quite as dense as that of our earth, 

 without the necessity of clouds floating in it. 

 The climate of Persia is reputed the most de- 

 lightful on the earth. For three months of 

 winter it is more or less cloudy, and during 

 the other nine months a cloud seldom appears 

 in its sky ; yet it is pre-eminently the land of 

 flowers, and every one knows that localities 

 where clouds and fogs predominate are natu- 

 rally miasmatic and engender diseases of all 

 kinds more than any other climatic conditions. 

 What follows in quotation-marks may be found 

 in Elliot and Storer's " Manual of Inorganic 

 Chemistry," pages 149, 150, and 151 : " Anto- 

 zone is a gas, the odor of which somewhat re- 

 sembles ozone ; there is, however, a decided 

 difference between the two odors, that of an- 

 tozone being disgusting, while that of ozone 

 is merely pungent and irritating. Antozone 

 changes at once to ordinary oxygen on being 

 heated. A very remarkable characteristic of 

 antozone is its power of forming fogs and clouds 

 with water. It may even be found, after the 

 matter has been more thoroughly studied, that 

 all the fogs and clouds which occur in nature 

 are dependent for their existence upon the pres- 

 ence of antozone. If air charged with anto- 

 zone be made to bubble through water, it will 

 emerge from the water in the form of a thick, 

 white mist, similar to that formed by the cool- 

 ing of steam. The same thing occurs when 

 electrized air, or electrized oxygen, issues into 

 a moist atmosphere. The mist produced by 



slowly passing antozonized air through water 

 is heavy; it remains hanging over the surface 

 of the liquid, and may be readily poured from 

 one vessel to another. By conducting it 

 through a tube to the bottom of a tall, dry 

 bottle, it displaces the air, all the while pre- 

 serving a sharply defined boundary; by gentle 

 agitation it is easily broken up into cloud-like 

 masses. When a large, dry bottle is nearly 

 filled with this antozone-mist, then closed and 

 left to itself, the mist gradually becomes thinner 

 and less opaque, and in the course of half or 

 three quarters of an hour vanishes altogether. 

 As the cloud thus disappears, water is deposited 

 upon the sides of the bottle, at first as a mere 

 dew, but afterward accumulating in drops, 

 which finally flow together to the bottom of 

 the vessel. When the air in the bottle has be- 

 come clear, no antozone can be detected in it. 

 It thus appears that antozone has the property 

 of taking up water in such a manner that the 

 water assumes the peculiar physical condition 

 of a cloud or mist. While the antozone lasts, 

 the cloud is permanent ; but the antozone is 

 soon transformed into ordinary oxygen, and as 

 fast as this change occurs the water of the 

 cloud is deposited in drops. It has been proved 

 by experiment that electrized air can support 

 or carry nearly twice as much moisture as or- 

 dinary air or ogygen at the same temperature, 

 and that this air is much more difficult to dry 

 than the gases with which chemists usually 

 have to deal. Tobacco- smoke, the gray smoke 

 of chimneys and of gunpowder, and all such 

 smokes, are antozone clouds facts which sup- 

 port the idea that all clouds, fogs, and mists 

 are caused by the presence of antozone in the 

 atmosphere." 



It is obvious from the above quotations that 

 the presence of clouds and mists in the earth's 

 atmosphere is due to antozone ; and where 

 that deleterious gas is absent from the atmos- 

 phere of any locality upon the earth's surface, 

 no clouds or fogs can form, and the oxygen of 

 the air is in a state of purity, hence the salu- 

 tary effects produced upon animal life by a 

 clear atmosphere. Ozone and antozone are 

 produced when oxygen gas is decomposed, 

 although until lately oxygen was supposed to 

 be a simple element. Antozone is an extin- 

 guisher of flame, and therefore of life, while 

 ozone is too vigorous a supporter of both, and 

 therefore also injurious to breathe. Oxygen is 

 decomposed by having passed through it a cur- 

 rent of electricity ; hence, when thunder-storms 

 occur, large quantities of the oxygen of the air 

 are decomposed, and the antozone thus formed 

 produces clouds and mists in quantities corre- 

 sponding to the energy, extent, and continu- 

 ation of the electric storm. Who that has 

 watched the progress of some great thunder- 

 storm has not seen the cumulus cloud roll up 

 from the location of the lightning-flashes? 

 Simply because the vigorous electric action 

 had decomposed correspondingly large quanti- 

 ties of oxygen, and the antozone thus liber- 



