COSMOS. 



O.G9. Nitrogen is a source of increased fertility, 58 by the 

 formation of ammonia, through the medium of the almost 

 daily electrical explosions in tropical countries. The influ- 

 ence of nitrogen on vegetation is similar to that of the sub- 

 stratum of atmospheric carbonic acid. 



In analysing the different gases of the volcanoes which 

 lie nearest to the equator (Tolima, Purace, Pasto, Tuqueres 

 and Cunibal) Boussingault has discovered, along with a great 

 deal of aqueous vapour, carbonic acid and sulphuretted 

 hydrogen gas, but no muriatic acid, no nitrogen and no free 

 hydrogen. 56 The influence still exercised by the interior of 

 our planet on the chemical composition of the atmosphere 

 in withdrawing this matter in order to give it out again 

 under other forms, is certainly but an insignificant part of 

 the chemical revolutions which the atmosphere must have 

 undergone in remote ages on the eruption of great masses of 

 rock from open fissures. The conjecture as to the probability 

 of a very large portion of carbonic acid gas in the ancient 



55 Boussingault, Economic rurale (1851), t. ii, p. 724 726; "The 

 permanency of storms in the interior of the atmosphere (within the 

 tropics) is an interesting fact, being connected with one of the most 

 important questions in the physical history of the globe, namely, that 

 of the fixation of the nitrogen of the air in organised beings. When- 

 ever a series of electric sparks passes through the humid atmosphere, 

 the production and combination of nitric acid and ammonia take place. 

 The nitrate of ammonia uniformly accompanies the rain during a storm, 

 and being by nature fixed, it cannot maintain itself in the state of 

 vapour; carbonate of ammonia is found in the air, and the ammonia 

 of the nitrate is carried to the earth by the rain. Thus it appears, in 

 fact, to be an electric action which disposes the nitrogen of the atmo- 

 sphere to become assimilated by organised beings. In the equinoxial 

 zone, throughout the whole year, every day, and probably even every 

 moment, there is a continual succession of electric discharges going on. 

 An observer, stationed at the equator, if he were endowed with organs 

 sufficiently sensitive, would hear without intermission the noise of thun- 

 der." Sal ammoniac, however, together with common salt, are from 

 time to time found as products of sublimation, even in lava-streams, 

 on Hecla, Vesuvius, and Etna, in the volcanic chain of Guatemala (the 

 volcano of Izalco), and above all in Asia in the volcanic chain of the 

 Thian-shan. The inhabitants of the country between Kutsch, Turfan, 

 and Kami pay their tribute to the Emperor of China in certain years 

 in sal ammoniac (in Chinese nao-sha, in Persian nushadcn), which is an 

 important article of internal trade. (Asie Centrale, t. ii, pp. 33, 38, 45, 

 and 428.) 



M Viajcs de Boussingault (1849) p. 78. 



