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183
we may be ab le to keep pace in know ledge with our
brethren in the other hemisphere, and perhaps return
them a brilliant thing or two of Australian or1g1n . ...
Likewise, it revealed his admiration and respect for the great achievers
in science, like Sir Michael Faraday and Schnbein, and his simple faith
in the goodness and reasonableness of creation, that all things would be
explained if man had the time and patience to persist in enquiry .
. . . . Wherever electricity passes from the negative to the
positive state in atmospheric air , ozone is generated.
Electrical discharges take place not only during
thunderstorms but daily and hourly in many operations
of nature. How beautiful are Nature's laws ! How
powerfully, how providentially, how beneficently has
the adorab le God of Nature - its Greator and Ours -
supplied all our wants . Even in that awful commotion
when His thunderb olts are flashing around us, and the
war of the elements seems to threaten the dissolution
of all things, the Christian philosopher can now
recognize His paternal care, the very lightning
engaged in the elixir of health.
Basing the whole theme of his lecture on the popular notion that
atmospheric charges influenced the state of human health, and that the
epidemic constitution of the air which produced pestilence was an effect
of changes in the air of a more remarkab le kind, Hall maintained that
people must work in accordance with the laws of nature.
Abbott 's and Hall's experiments proved conclusively that the
amounts of ozone avai lable varied cons iderab ly from time to time and from
place to place: inside stuffy, ill-ventilated rooms there was none; in
parts of the city exposed to fresh sea-winds from the south or east there
was plenty;
considerab ly; ·
once the winds had passed over the city the amount dropped
it seemed that the amount of ozone available might vary
inversely to the proportion of bad sanitation.
findings Hall concluded
I am confident that it will ultimately be proved that
this favoured isle is more liberally supplied with
Ozone than almost any climate in the world.
After discussing his
He appealed to his audience not to throw away such an advantage foolishly,
but to allow nature to carry out her laws by agreeing to the reforms he
advocated.
Although the lecture offered no definite proof of the
validity of Hall's arguments, it was an attempt to give them a scientific
basis.
Justifying himself and his theme he summed up his belief:
The subject of Ozone, however little known here, is not
a recondite, abstruse, trivial, unpopular one , in which
only medical and scientific men have any interest. That