Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455. Various
in themselves, but as giving a foretaste of what is to come. In the autumn of last year, a careful statistician calculated that the railways of Europe and America, as then in operation, extended in the aggregate to 25,350 miles, the total cost of which was four hundred and fifty millions of pounds. Of this, the United Kingdom had 7000 miles, costing L.250,000,000. According to the view here given, the 7000 miles of our own railways have been constructed at an expense prodigiously greater than the remaining 18,350 miles in other parts of the world. It needs no figures to prove that this is the fact. Many of the continental and American railways are single lines, and so far they have been got up at a comparatively small cost. But the substantial difference of expense lies in our plan of leaving railway undertakings to private parties—rival speculators and jobbers, whose aim has too frequently been plunder. And how enormous has been that plunder let enriched engineers and lawyers—let impoverished victims—declare. Shame on the British legislature, to have tolerated and legalised the railway villainies of the last ten years; in comparison with which the enforcements of continental despotisms are angelic innocence!
Besides being got up in a simple and satisfactory manner, under government decrees and state responsibility, the continental railways are evidently more under control than those of the United Kingdom. The speed of trains is regulated to a moderate and safe degree; on all hands there seems to be a superior class of officials in charge; and as the lines have been made at a small cost, the fares paid by travellers are for the most part very much lower than in this country. Government interference abroad is, therefore, not altogether a wrong. Annoying as it may sometimes be, and bad as it avowedly is in principle, there is in it the spirit of protection against private oppression. And perhaps the English may by and by discover that jobbing-companies, with stupendous capital and a monopoly of conveyance, are capable of doing as tyrannical things as any continental autocrat!
If a section of the English public stands disgraced in the eyes of Europe by its vicious speculation—properly speaking, gambling—in railway finance, our country is in some degree redeemed from obloquy by the grandeur of a social melioration which jobbing has not been able to obstruct. The wide spread of railways over the continent, we have said, is working a perceptible change in almost all those arrangements which bear on the daily comforts of life. No engine of a merely physical kind has ever wrought so powerfully to secure lasting international peace as the steam-engine. The locomotive is every hour breaking down barriers of separation between races of men. And as wars in future could be conducted only by cutting short the journeys by railway, arresting trains, and ruining great commercial undertakings, we may expect that nations will pause before rushing into them. Already, the French railways, which push across the frontier into the German countries, are visibly relaxing the custom-house and passport systems. Stopping a whole train at an imaginary boundary to examine fifteen hundred passports, is beyond even the French capacity for official minutiæ. A hurried glance, or no glance at all—a sham inspection at the best—is all that the gentlemen with moustaches and cocked-hats can manage. The very attempt to look at bushels of passports is becoming an absurdity. And what has to be done in the twinkling of an eye, will, we have no doubt, soon not be done at all. Thanks to railways for this vast privilege of free locomotion!
A NEW PRINCIPLE IN NATURE
It is pretty well known that researches by Matteucci, Du Bois-Reymond, and others, have made us acquainted with the influence of electricity and galvanism on the muscular system of animals, and that important physiological effects have been attributed to this influence, more than perhaps we are warranted in assuming in the present state of our knowledge. That an influence is exerted in some way, is clear from the difference in our feelings in dry and wet weather: it has been supposed, however, that the effects on the nervous system are not produced by an accumulation of positive or of negative electricity, but by the combination of the two producing dynamic electricity. While these points are undergoing discussion, we have an opportunity of bringing before our readers the results of investigations bearing on the general question.
Most persons are aware of the fact, that a peculiar taste follows the application of two different metals to the tongue in a popular galvanic experiment. This taste is caused by the azotic acid formed from the oxygen and azote of the atmosphere. An electric discharge, too, is accompanied by a smell, which smell is due to the presence of what is called ozone; and not long ago M. Schoenbein, of Basel, the inventor of guncotton, discovered ozone as a principle in the oxygen of the atmosphere; and it is considered to be the active principle of that universal constituent. Later researches have brought out a striking analogy between the properties of ozone and chlorine, and have led to conclusions as to the dangerous effect which the former may produce, in certain cases, on the organs of respiration. Some idea of its energy may be formed from the fact, that mice perish speedily in air which contains one six-thousandth of ozone. It is always present in the atmosphere in a greater or lesser degree, in direct relation with the amount of atmospheric electricity, and appears to obey the same laws in its variations, finding its maximum in winter and its minimum in summer.
Ozone, in scientific language, is described as 'a compound of oxygen analogous to the peroxide of hydrogen, or, that it is oxygen in an allotropic state—that is, with the capability of immediate and ready action impressed upon it.' Besides being produced by electrical discharges in the atmosphere, it can be obtained artificially by the passing of what is called the electrical brush into the air from a moist wooden point, or by electrolyzed water or phosphorus. The process, when the latter substance is employed, is to put a small piece, clean scraped, about half an inch long, into a large bottle which contains just so much of water as to half cover the phosphorus, and then closing the mouth slightly, to guard against combustion, to leave it standing for a time in a temperature of about 60 degrees. Ozone soon begins to be formed, as shewn by the rising of a light column of smoke from the phosphorus, which, at the same time, becomes luminous. In five or six hours, the quantity will be abundant, when the bottle is to be emptied of its contents, washed out, and closed for use and experiment.
Whichever way the ozone be produced, it is always identical in its properties; and these are described as numerous and remarkable. Its odour is peculiar, resembling that of chlorine, and, when diluted, cannot be distinguished from what is called the electric smell. When largely diffused in atmospheric air, it causes unpleasant sensations, makes respiration difficult, and, by acting powerfully on the mucous membranes, produces catarrhal effects; and as such air will kill small animals, it shews that pure ozone must be highly injurious to the animal economy. It is insoluble in water, is powerfully electromotive, and is most strikingly energetic in numerous chemical agencies, its action on nearly all metallic bodies being to carry them at once to the state of peroxide, or to their highest point of oxidation; it changes sulphurets into sulphates, instantaneously destroys several gaseous compounds, and bleaches indigo, thus shewing its analogy with chlorine.
In proceeding to the account of his experiments, M. Schoenbein shews, that gases can be produced by chemical means, which exercise an oxidizing influence of a powerful nature, especially in their physiological effects, even when diffused through the atmosphere in very minute quantities: also, that owing to the immense number of organic beings on the earth, their daily death and decomposition, an enormous amount of gases is produced similar to those which can be obtained by artificial means; and besides these, a quantity of gaseous or volatile products, 'whose chemical nature,' as the author observes, 'is as yet unknown, but of which we can easily admit that some, at least, diffused through the air, even in very small quantities, and breathed with it, exert a most deplorable action on the animal organism. Hence it follows, that the decomposition of organic matters ought to be considered as one of the principal causes of the corruption of the air by miasmatic substances. Now, a continuous cause, and acting on so vast a scale, would necessarily diffuse through the atmosphere a considerable mass of miasmatic gases, and accumulate them till at length it would be completely poisoned, and rendered incapable of supporting animal life, if nature had not found the means of destroying these noxious matters in proportion as they are produced.'
The question then arises: What are the means employed for this object? M. Schoenbein believes that he has found it in the action of ozone, which is continually formed by the electricity of the atmosphere, and is known to be a most powerful agent of oxidation, causing serious modifications of organic bodies, and, consequently, of their physiological action. 'To assure myself,' he pursues, 'that ozone destroys the