During the combustion of phosphorus in the atmosphere both kinds of ozone appear, and Professor Schönbein considers the slow combustion of that substance, which unites with the ozone and sets the antozone free, as the type of all the slow oxidations which organic and inorganic bodies undergo in moist atmospheric air; that true oxidation is always preceded by the appearance of the peroxide of hydrogen, and that this compound acts an important part in slow oxidations, and is deeply concerned in animal respiration, and in many other chemical actions going on in nature.
In confirmation of these views, it is certain that ozone is a powerful minister in the work of decay. If wood be made explosive like gun-cotton by a similar process, it becomes pulverulent after a time, and burns without exploding, though it still retains its shape. In the natural state of the wood the oxygen is passive and quiescent, for oxygen is a constituent of wood; in its second state it is explosive, and after a time that is succeeded by the semi-active state of ozone, which by a slow imperceptible combustion causes the wood to decay. Mr. Faraday observes that the force which would have been explosive had it been concentrated into one effort, expends itself in a long continued progressive change.
‘The majestic phenomena of combustion bespeak our admiration and rivet our attention because of their imposing grandeur; yet these are but spasmodic efforts in the grand economy of the material world, occurrences of now and then. The slower but continuous progress of the elements to their appointed resting-place, the silent, tranquil, ever progressing metamorphic changes involved in the phenomena of decomposition and decay, these we count for nothing and pass unheeded by. Yet with all their majesty, with all their brilliancy, all their development of tremendous energy, what are the phenomena of combustion in the grand scheme of the universe compared with these? When the loud crash of the thunder or the lightning’s flash awakens us from our thoughtless abstractions or our reveries, our feelings become impressed with the grandeur of Omnipotence and the might of the elements he wields, yet the whole fury of the thunderstorm—what is that in comparison with the electric energies which silently and continually exert themselves in every chemical change? Why, the electric force in a single drop of water, and disturbed when that water is decomposed, is of itself greater than in the electricity of a whole thunderstorm. Those of us who limit our appreciation of the powers of oxygen to the energies displayed by this element in its feebly active state, form but a very inadequate idea of the aggregate results accomplished by it in the economy of the world.’ Oxygen is the only known gas that is allotropic, and is the only known substance that is doubly allotropic, that is existing in three different states similar to oxygen, ozone, and antozone.