58 LETTEES OF BEEZELIUS 



P.S. 1. Of the enclosed strips of litmus paper : 



No. 1 is bleached by electrical ozone. 

 No. 2 by voltaic ozone. 

 No. 3 by chemical ozone. 



P.S. 2. I must add that I have obtained potassium 

 nitrate by treating chemically-prepared ozone with 

 potash solution. I am hoping to discover, as well as 

 potassium ozonate, i.e., nitrate, potassium ozonide. It 

 is, no doubt, chemically possible that ozone, air, and 

 potash may give potassium nitrate. But at any rate 

 the fact that potassium nitrate is found under these 

 conditions is a very remarkable phenomenon, and 

 seems to go far to confirm the view expressed in my 

 letter that nitrogen is hydrogen ozonide. 



An extensive extract from this detailed letter was 

 printed in the fifth number of the first year's publication of 

 the Ofversigt af Kongl. Vetenskaps Akademiens forhand- 

 lingar of 15th May 1844 [vol i., p. 71-75], and 

 next day Berzelius wrote personally to Schb'nbein. He 

 thought that the whole ozone question was still waiting 

 for a satisfactory solution, as is shown by the remarks 

 which he appended to Schonbein's letter, by his own 

 letter, and still more clearly from the Jdhresbericht. 

 He considered ozone, as he says there, to be a "proble- 

 matic body." 



We need not be surprised at Schonbein's bold assump- 

 tion of the decomposition of nitrogen. Berzelius was 

 just the man whom he might expect to encourage him 

 in this view, for in his inmost heart he had always 

 believed l in the compound nature of nitrogen, although 



1 Cf. Kose, Gedachtnisrede auf Berzelius, Berlin (1852), p. 27. 



