234 ORIGIN OF THE NITRATES. 



9. Two of the experiments enable the demonstration to be 

 carried even further. In fact, the damp paper contained in two 

 tubes (nitrogen with an armature of silver in the inner tube, air 

 with an armature of platinum in the annular space) was found 

 to be covered with greenish stains, formed of microscopic algae, 

 with fine filaments interlaced and covered with fructifications. 

 They derived their origin, no doubt, from some germs introduced 

 accidentally before the closing of the tubes. Now, in these two 

 tubes there was much more nitrogen fixed than in tubes deprived 

 of vegetable matter. In the nitrogen tube especially, the gases 

 emitted a sourish and slightly foetid odour, similar to that of 

 certain fermentations, and the deposition of nitrogen was much 

 greater than in any of the others. 



10. From these facts it follows that the deposition of nitrogen 

 in nature, which is indispensable for the formation of nitrates, 

 and also for the development of vegetable life, may take place 

 directly and under normal atmospheric conditions, without 

 necessarily being correlative either with the formation of ozone 

 or with the previous production of ammonia or nitrous com- 

 pounds ; this last-named production only taking place with the 

 help of stormy and exceptional tensions. 



We know, however, that working in a closed space, Boussing- 

 ault, whose ability is well known, did not succeed in proving 

 the absorption of free nitrogen. But atmospheric electricity at 

 a low tension did not act in these experiments in vitro, in which 

 the potential is the same at all the internal points of the 

 apparatus, and its intervention is apparently of a nature to 

 modify the conclusions of this eminent authority. 



11. The result of the author's experiments is to show clearly 

 the influence of a new natural cause, an influence of great 

 importance to vegetation. Up to the present, whenever the 

 question of atmospheric electricity has been studied from an 

 agricultural point of view, only its luminous and violent 

 manifestations have been considered, such as thunder and 

 lightning. Even the action in nature of those high tensions 

 which determine the formation of nitrous compounds by 

 influence had scarcely been taken into consideration before the 

 author's experiments (p. 215). 



In all cases, only the formation of nitric and nitrous acids 

 and of ammonium nitrate was studied. The author considers 

 that up to the present there has been no other suggestion made 

 with regard to the influence of atmospheric electricity being 

 capable of constituting the distant and indirect source of the 

 fixing of nitrogen on vegetable substances. Before the experi- 

 ments just described, there was no idea of the direct reactions 

 that can take place between vegetable matter and atmospheric 

 nitrogen under the influence of feeble electrical tensions. 

 The starting into activity of the nitrogen under these feeble 



