Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 447 



We may therefore regard the two postulates above indicated as 

 correct. 



The temperature is really represented by the length of oscillation 

 of the molecules of solid bodies. 



Analogous equations connect the elements of volatile liquids 

 when compared at their boiling-points. — Comptes Rendus de V Aca- 

 demic des Sciences, April 28, 1879, t. lxxxviii. pp. 855-857. 



ON OZONE AND THE ELECTKIC EFFLUVIUM. BY M. BERTHELOT. 



1. The following are some experiments selected from those which 

 I have made in the course of my researches upon persulphuric and 

 hyperoxygenated acids, experiments the results of which appeared 

 to me worth making known. 



2. First, of the combination of oxygen with hydrogen. I have 

 found that these two gases, mixed in the proportion of 2 volumes 

 of hydrogen to 1 of oxygen, do not combine under the influence 

 of the effluvium, even at the end of several hours, either in concen- 

 tric sealed glass tubes*, or in a tube surrounded by a lamellar 

 spiral of platinumf and placed over mercury; in my trials the 

 tension was nearly that developed across air by sparks of 7 or 8 

 centiins. length in operating with an induction-coil furnished with 

 a condenser. No doubt, by progressively increasing the tensions 

 up to approximately those which produce disruptive discharges, 

 the formation of water would be provoked. .But it appeared to 

 me of interest to prove that that formation does not take place 

 with such tensions as the preceding, and under conditions where 

 the portion of ozone formed is very considerable. 



The resistance of hydrogen to combination under these conditions 

 is the more remarkable, as they are precisely those under which 

 oxygen combines with metals, with sulphurous acid, arsenious acid, 

 iodine, and even with nitrogen, although this last reaction demands 

 considerably stronger electrical tensions than the others. 



Under these conditions, moreover, the vapour of water is not 

 decomposed by the effluvium, nor does oxygen combine with water 

 to form oxygenated water. 



3. These phenomena contrast with those which I have observed 

 on carbonic acid. In fact, the oxide of carbon and oxygen, mixed 

 in a test-tube over mercury in the proportion of two volumes of 

 the one to one volume of the other, combine under the influence 

 of similar electric tensions to the preceding. After twelve hours 

 there remained only 8 per cent, of oxide of carbon and 2 per cent, 

 of oxygen. One part of the latter had been absorbed by the mer- 

 cury ; and a portion (about 5 hundredths) of the oxide of carbon 

 had co-operated in the formation of the brown suboxide, C 3 4 . 



This incompleteness of the reaction is not less manifest in the 



* Annates der Chimie et de Physique, 5 serie, t. xii. p. 466. 

 t Ibid. t. x. p. 79. 



