[■June, 
362 The History of Antozone 
nature of the problems under study, and ask yourselves 
whether, as he stated them, the problems were not too vague 
to admit of precise thinking or of crucial experimentation. 
Antozone, says Meissner, is identical with the gas which is 
set free by the adtion of sulphuric acid upon peroxide of 
barium, except in the two respedls that, unlike this gas, it 
does not decompose iodide of potassium, and it does not 
smell. (In other words, it is identical with a gas from which 
it differs in two essential charadters.) But (note how the 
accompanying qualification tends to clarify our ideas) this 
gas likewise loses its smell, clouds at the same time being 
formed, on coming into contadt with moist air. (!) 
According to Meissner ozone could not oxidise nitrogen, 
and probably antozone alone could not do so either, but 
both together could bring it about, in case moisture were 
present and other oxidisable bodies were absent. As the 
peculiarly distinguishing charadteristic of antozone, Meiss- 
ner rated its power of forming clouds in contadt with water. 
When the water was abstradted from these clouds by contadt 
with desiccating bodies, the dried antozone could form anto- 
zone again by transmission through water. 
Finally, in opposition to Schonbein, Meissner held that 
antozone was not absorbed or adted upon by potassium 
iodide, so that if a mixture of ozone and antozone is passed 
through a solution of iodide of potassium the ozone is 
absorbed, while the antozone escapes and passes on free. 
I have endeavoured to present above the views entertained 
by Schonbein, Meissner, and others concerning antozone, as 
lucidly as the contradidtory and oftentimes vague statements 
made concerning it would allow, and have brought its history 
down to the time of the publication by Von Babo of the 
memoir before alluded to (1863), in which the weakness of 
the experimental evidence brought forth in support of a 
belief in its existence was for the first time clearly set forth. 
For Meissner, it will be recolledted, saw, in its power of 
generating a cloud in contadl with water, the distinguishing 
property of antozone. Von Babo discovered that the forma- 
tion of a cloud is always to be noted when, in any manner 
whatsoever, ozone is decomposed, water being present. 
Meissner believed that the clouds could not be due to per- 
oxide of hydrogen, because, according to him, the latter is 
not volatile. If, then, peroxide of hydrogen was not con- 
cerned in these phenomena, there was left — as the only 
other alternative under the circumstances — the hypothesis 
of a peculiar modification of oxygen capable of giving rise 
to them; and to this modification, which again was 
