34 Scientific Proceedings, Royal Dublin Society. 
IV.—NOTES ON ARCTIC AIR, sy EDWARD L. MOSS, 
STAFF SURGEON, R.N. 
[Read May 20, 1878.] 
A Paper by Professor Tyndall on Spontaneous Generation in 
the January number of the “Nineteenth Century” contains a 
record of some experiments strikingly confirming the conclusion 
arrived at by Pasteur, that the causes of putrescent infection are 
comparatively absent in the air of high altitudes in the Alps. 
The air of similar high altitudes has been chemically examined 
by Dr. Frankland,* who estimated its three principal gases con- 
temporaneously with results corroborative of those obtained by 
Messrs. H. and A. Schlagintweit and Dr. Miller, and also by De 
Saussuret and Dr. Angus Smith} so that it may be taken as an 
ascertained fact that the pure air of high altitudes contains a 
larger percentage of carbonic acid than the open air of lower 
levels. 
High altitudes are in many respects comparable to high 
latitudes, and it may be of interest to enquire firstly, whether the 
parallelism extends into the biological, and secondly, into the 
chemical characters of their atmospheres. 
On looking back through Arctic literature I can find no 
reference to a search for infective germs or any other microscopic 
organisms in polar air. Its antisceptic qualities are notorious, 
but have been very naturally attributed solely to low tempera- 
ture. The only special references to putrefaction that I know of 
in Arctic narratives are the extraordinary instances reported by 
Drs. Kane and Hayes. The former details a case§ in which a 
reindeer cut up, but left unskinned and apparently uneviscerated, 
became in thirty-six hours “nearly uneatable from putrefaction, 
the liver and intestines utterly so” although the temperature, 
temporarily raised by a warm wind from the interior of Green- 
* Journal Chem. Soc. Vol. xiii. p. 22. t Annales de Chimie, Vol. xxxviii. 
+ Smith, Air and Rain, p. 59. § Kane’s, Grinnel Expedition, Vol. ii. p. 51. 
