410 Scientific Intelligence. 
copper. If,a piano wire be heated in a crucible lined with carbon 
and filled with lime, the wire increas es in weight and shows on 
Ie me presence of calcium.— C. #., xeili, 1074. G. F. 
e production of Active Oxygen.—TravBx has summed 
up the poet tet upon the production of active oxygen to which 
he has been led by his experiments. He finds (1) that hydrogen- 
palladium, agitated with water and oxygen (or air) produces im- 
mediately and abundantly hydrogen peroxide; (2) that the oxi- 
dizing —— of hydrogen-palladium in presence of oxygen and 
water, is not a direct one but depends almost entirely upon the 
bn plegea peroxide ec bace p canbe (3) that only in a single 
case has he observed the oxidizing action of ee ee 
to be different from that of hydrogen peroxide; iodide of potas- 
ay and starch, which is not blued by H,0O,, is blued pe once by 
e hydrogen- palladium and oxygen ; evidently by the carrier- 
action of the palladium transferring oxygen from the hydrogen 
positively, in opposition to the view of Hoppe-Seyler, that nascent 
hydrogen cannot produce active oxygen from ordinary oxygen by 
aptitting its molecule; and (5) that the frequent production of 
hydrogen peroxide in | processes * oxidation is no evidence of the 
split, but the molecule of water, its oxygen combining with the 
zine to form the hydrate, its hydrogen uniting directly with the 
oxygen molecule to form hydrogen peroxide, thus 
‘O—H 
Zu+(H,O0),+0,=Zn(OH), ay Hr 
Hydrogen peroxide is ih gine mS bey union > a mo sigan te: 
oxygen with two atoms of hydro By analogy with 
ye 
i € uctio of a. 
might be called reduced oxygen. It behaves toward common 
oxygen as ebay ite to indigo-blue.— Ber. Berl. coe (res, 
xv, 222, Fe 
4. On ee aed Per. bile attas hd oxide of Berthelot. aie by 
the mode of its producti s well as by its reactious and proper- 
ties, the body discovered ti Berthelot, and called by him persul- 
bodies MnO, and PbO,, which form salts, he would call dioxides 
vad The blue Cr,0.,, the highest stage of oxidation of chromium 
ust be viewed as chromium peroxide, or chromy! peroxide. 
Aer ing to the author’s view, an element, according to its char- 
acter, gives either basic or acidic oxides whi ch possess the pro 
erty of forming salts corresponding to the water type, and aboard: 
