POPULAE SCIENCE. 13 



to see is so much popularised. Hundreds of individuals using 

 English, but wholly void of science, talk and write about the 

 luxury of going into the country to breathe pure ozone. Un- 

 happy individuals ! they little know what they bargain for. 

 A little ozone will go a long way. Pure ozone entering the 

 lungs would be surely fatal ; one might as well breathe pure 

 chlorine. The popular use of the word ozone is in the ' fiery 

 element' and * subtle fluid' category. Certain persons can 

 only describe a conflagration by using the first, a lightning 

 flash by the second. We have no concern with ozone or allo- 

 tropic oxygen now, neither with allotropic sulphur ; for this 

 also may take on a second form wholly dissimilar to ordinary 

 brimstone. Allotropic phosphorus is what we have to do with, 

 and the following particulars relate to it. 



In the year 1849 a Viennese chemist, Professor Schrotter, 

 surprised and rather amused the staid members of our British 

 Association by announcing that in his waistcoat-pocket he had 

 brought a sample of phosphorus simply enveloped in a fold 

 of paper. Now the particular circumstance has to be borne 

 in mind, that phosphorus, as everybody knew phosphorus up 

 to the time of the Viennese professor, was an element so 

 prone to burn, that it had to be kept under water, and, when 

 removed from water, handled with the utmost caution, inas- 

 much as a degree of heat little exceeding that of the human 

 body caused it to burst into flame. Sure enough the Vien- 

 nese chemist had brought in his pocket a certain puce-coloured 

 material, and he called it phosphorus; but no such phos- 

 phorus had ever been seen. Philosophers tried to smell it. 

 The thing had no smell. Ordinary phosphorus smells strongly. 

 Philosophers shook their heads and demurred; but the 

 Viennese chemist, using means unnecessary to describe, here, 

 changed his puce-coloured powder into ordinary phosphorus 

 without adding anything to it or taking anything away. This 

 evidence was of course irresistible. The Viennese phosphorus 

 had assumed some second form, just as carbon may assume a 



