NITKOGEN FIXED BY ATMOSPHERIC ELECTRICITY. 233 



ments published by Thoinsen, Mascart, and various other 

 experimentalists. 



8. In order to complete this demonstration, it was thought 

 expedient to operate upon atmospheric electricity itself. For this 

 purpose, the author worked by means of the difference of 

 potential existing between the earth and a stratum of air about 

 two metres above it in the garden of the observatory at 

 Montsouris. 



The results obtained, during experiments which lasted from 

 July 29 to October 5, 1876, i.e. rather more than two months, 

 will now be given, the mean electrical tension having been 

 about that of three and a half Daniell cells, and having 

 fluctuated in absolute value from + 60 Daniell to about 180 

 Daniell, in the apparatus. 



In all the tubes, without exception, whether they contained 

 pure nitrogen or ordinary air, whether they were hermetically 

 sealed or in free communication with the atmosphere, the 

 nitrogen fixed itself upon the organic substance (paper or 

 dextrine), forming an amide compound, which was decomposed 

 by soda-lime at about 300 to 400, with regeneration of 

 ammonia. 



The same substances, left freely exposed to the atmosphere 

 of a room apart from the laboratory, did not give the least sign 

 of the fixation of nitrogen. 



The quantity of nitrogen thus fixed under the influence of 

 atmospheric electricity is, moreover, very small in each tube. 

 This may be explained by the smallness of the weight of 

 organic matter (a few centigrammes), by the slowness of the 

 reactions, and lastly by the limited extent of the surfaces 

 influenced. 1 As, however, the number of tubes capable of 

 being arranged in the same circuit might certainly be very 

 much increased, without affecting the electrical effects any more 

 than the chemical effects derived from them, we see that the 

 quantity of nitrogen capable of being deposited on a surface 

 covered with organic matter at the end of a suitable time may 

 be rendered considerable without any other depositing influence 

 being brought to bear upon it than the natural difference of 

 potential between the earth and the strata of air two metres 

 above it. We thus find ourselves in conditions similar to those 

 of vegetation increased in the relation existing between the 

 distance from the outflow tube in the Thomsen apparatus to 

 the earth and the distance between the two armatures of the 

 author's tubes. 



1 No trace of nitric acid was found either in the water which had been in 

 contact with the organic substances, or in special tubes containing only air 

 and water and subjected simultaneously to atmospheric electricity. The 

 silent discharge under these conditions of feeble tension does not, therefore, 

 seem to determine the union of the nitrogen with oxygen, so as to form nitric 

 acid. 



