124 
and it was agreed that we should commence experimenting 
as soon as leisure would permit. Business affairs, however, 
obliged me to leave the subject in abeyance. 
In the year 1839 F. 0. Schonbein, Professor of Chemistry 
at Basle, whilst decomposing water by a voltaic ‘battery, 
noticed that an odorous substance was evolved along with 
the oxygen gas at the positive pole. The identity of this 
odour with that which usually accompanies lightning, and 
that which is produced by passing sparks from an electrical 
machine to pieces of platinum or gold, induced him to enter 
on an investigation to discover, if possible, the source and 
properties of this odorous body, to which he gave the name 
Ozone.” His discovery was announced in a memoir which 
he presented to the Academy of Munich in 1840. When an 
account of his experiments appeared in the scientific 
periodicals, I recognised under the name of ozone the 
odorous body which had surprised us during our experi- 
ments in 1838. 
The announcement of Schonbein’s discovery caused con= 
siderable excitement in the scientific world, and a large 
number of scientific men in this country, and on the 
Continent, commenced investigating the properties of this 
remarkable body. In this brief and imperfect notice I can 
only name a few of the experiments. Those who are 
interested in the history of ozone may consult Dr. C. Fox’s 
exhaustive work on ozone and antozone.'^' In “Nature,” 
March 5th and 12th, 1874, there is also a very interesting 
account of ozone, in an address delivered before the Boyal 
Society of Edinburgh by Hr, Andrews, F.E.S., December, 
1873. 
What is ozone ? This is a question not easily answered 
in a satisfactory manner. This body has been tortured in 
every conceivable way by a legion of able experimentalists 
for the last thirty years, and up to this moment scientific 
men are not all agreed upon this subject. 
* Published by Churchill. 1873, 
