222 
THE BORDERLAND OF CHEMISTRY AND ELECTRICITY. 
are able to separate from water “iron,” possibly carbonate or ferrous 
oxide, for these compounds of like metal are soluble in water. Thus 
water from peat beds contains \ grain ferrous carbonate per gallon. 
These organisms being vegetables absorb iron in the same way as trees 
and plants; as they are of a brown colour, like iron may be, present 
as oxide, but certain organic salts of iron are also of this colour. 
Some day, I believe, that our organic chemist will evolutionise 
alkaloids, which will produce the various diseases attributed to 
bacteria. How the bacteria farmers propose to prevent their bacteria 
cattle from becoming disease producers is a difficult problem. 
There is another difficulty to combat. We will suppose that a town 
with sewage of 10,000,000 gallons a day has filter beds of nitrate 
bacteria equal to this amount, as far as capacity is concerned. A 
storm occurs, and instead of 10,000,000 gallons in twenty-four hours, 
10,000,000 gallons in two hours has to be dealt with, what is the 
remedy ? Usually a storm overflow (fitted with flood gates). This 
quantity, therefore, with blue sweepings of putrescent matter goes into 
the river unfiltered. We are told that bacteria require seven hours to 
do their work. My experience, poor as it may be, teaches that 
twenty-one hours will be required in practice. Finally, as to bacteria. 
Trust them not, they are deceivers ever. 
There seems to be a craving for carbon filters again, but these were 
tried many years back and found wanting (when on a large scale). 
To produce a perfect effluent, there is nothing like sterilising the 
liquid by electrolytical change, when of course all living germs cease 
to exist. The cost of my process is considerably less now than it was 
some years back, as the electrical current can be produced at half the 
cost of what it was then. 
Putrefactive change produces a phenomenon called phosphorescence, 
i.e., by chemical action combined with oscillation, the other is oscillation 
or rapid vibration without chemical change. A piece of phosphorus 
glows, as we know, in the dark. This is partly due to the oxidising 
of the phosphorus, and hence the term ‘ phosphorescence. ’ 
Mr. Herbert Jackson, of King's College, who I still maintain was 
the first discoverer of what are known as rays, delivered a lecture 
at the last meeting of the British Association with experiments con¬ 
nected with this phenomenon. An extract from his remarkable paper 
may be of interest :— 
“The phenomena of phosphorescences may be looked upon as outward 
evidences of response on the part of the substance to rapid 
oscillations, where these oscillations have their origin in chemical 
combination, in what is commonly spoken of as light, or in 
electrical discharge. The nature of that response may be in some 
cases of a direct character, but when count is taken of the many 
degrees of persistency of phosphorescence and of potential phos¬ 
phorescence, it seems in many cases just to assume the form of 
something which, to avoid circumlocution, may be called a statical 
charge. The release of that condition of strain is accompanied by 
