APPENDIX 111 



oxygen, prepared from melted potassium chlorate, produce 

 ozone. I am, however, unable to assent to this view for 

 reasons which I have explained elsewhere, chiefly because 

 there is not a single fact to show that electricity is capable 

 of changing in any way the chemical properties of any 

 elementary substance whatever. If oxygen is capable of 

 undergoing so extraordinary a chemical change under the 

 influence of electricity, this is a case perfectly unique, to 

 which there is not even the remotest analogy to be found 

 in the whole sphere of chemistry. On the other hand a 

 large number of cases are known which prove conclusively 

 that oxygen, when united to certain substances, acquires 

 so great a degree of chemical activity that it oxidizes even 

 at ordinary temperatures, and this analogy, it seems to me, 

 is more in favour of my theory as to the nature of ozone 

 than of those proposed by others. Therefore I am firmly 

 convinced that the assumption that oxygen prepared from 

 melted potassium chlorate still contains traces of water is 

 less bold than the view that ozone is an allotropic modifica- 

 tion of ordinary oxygen. As I have already stated, I shall 

 give up my theory and accept the one which I now 

 dispute so soon as anybody succeeds in transforming 

 into ozone by means of electricity a single cubic inch of 

 really dry oxygen. However, I may be wrong, and the 

 view of Berzelius and de la Kive may be correct. In 

 that case we should have to assume that the oxylization 

 which a number of substances can produce in oxygen 

 by combining with it can also be produced by electricity 

 alone, and furthermore that, for example, the second 

 oxygen atom of the normal peroxides exists in these 

 compounds as ozone, or that ozone and oxylized oxygen 

 are one and the same substance. Then we should have 

 also to assume that heat could, under suitable conditions, 



