76 LETTEES OF BEKZELIUS 



are so interesting that I venture to communicate 

 them to you. This distinguished chemist obtains 

 from water completely freed from air and acidified 

 with pure sulphuric acid, large quantities of ozone if 

 the liquid is kept cool. Finely divided silver, which 

 rapidly absorbs ozone, forms with it nothing but 

 silver oxide ; potassium iodide gives only potassium 

 iodate and some carbonate. He fails, as I did, to get 

 any ozone with pure oxygen or with carbonic acid 

 or nitrogen, but he obtains it from both the two 

 last-named gases as well as from hydrogen, if they 

 contain free oxygen. It is easy to see by comparing 

 Marignac's results with mine, that the two series 

 supplement and confirm one another, and I think we 

 may fairly conclude from them, that oxygen and 

 hydrogen are the constituents of ozone, and that the 

 latter is formed whenever oxygen comes in contact 

 with water under the requisite conditions. The pro- 

 duction of ozone in the electrolysis of water can easily 

 be understood ; to explain the action of phosphorus 

 and electricity, we must suppose that they exert a 

 catalytic influence on the oxygen and the water. The 

 following facts seem to make it certain that ozone is 

 not identical with The'nard's hydrogen peroxide. 1 

 The latter has no smell, dissolves in water in all pro- 

 portions, communicates to platinum, according to 

 Becquerel's and my own observations, a positive 

 charge, and is converted by the catalytic action of 



1 Th^nard, " Memoire sur la combiuaison de 1'oxigene, et sur 

 les proprits extraordinaires que possede 1'eau exigence," 

 Memoires de PAcadJmie, Paris, vol. iii. (1820) p. 385. 



