AND SCHONBEIN 59 



he was no longer prepared to stand by the assertion he 

 made in 1818 "that the compound nature of nitrogen is 

 not to be regarded merely as a hypothesis, but, if we grant 

 the law of constant proportions, as an almost established 

 fact." i 



XI 



Berzelius to Schbnbein 



STOCKHOLM, IQth May 1844. 



MY DEAR SIR, 



I thank you sincerely for your extremely 

 interesting letter of 14th April, and for the scientific 

 novelties which it contains. In accordance with 

 your wish I laid it before the Koyal Academy 

 at their last meeting, and they ordered that an 

 extract from it be printed among their Transactions of 

 that meeting. 



Now that you are able to produce ozone chemically 

 you could surely saturate a sufficient amount of air 

 with it to enable you to obtain its compounds in 

 weighable quantities. If, for example, you were to 



1 Unersokning of Quafvets, Vatets och Ammoniakens natur. 

 Hisinger Afhandl. i Fysik, vol. v. (1818) p. 198 ; Gilbert, 

 AnnaL, vol. xlvi. (1814) p. 148. Previously, p. 133, he says : 

 " But my object is to prove that neither Gay-Lussac's analysis 

 of nitric acid, nor my own statements about the hyperbasic 

 salts considered above (the reference is to basic lead nitrate) are 

 right, and to show how by correcting these two analyses we can 

 remove satisfactorily all the objections which have hitherto 

 appeared to render the theory of the compound nature of 

 nitrogen untenable." 



