was supposed to serve no useful purpose in nature. It was not till the year 1880 that atmospheric dust came under scientific investigation, when it soon became evident that it played a most important part in nature, and that instead of being a nuisance to be got rid of, it added much to the comforts and pleasures of life.
The atmosphere is composed of a number of gases which have a nearly constant proportion to each other, and of varying proportions of water vapour. This vapour, constantly rising from land and sea, mixes with the gases in the atmosphere and so long as it remains vapour is invisible, but when it becomes cooled by the actual processes in nature the vapour tends to condense to the liquid condition and form cloud particles. Before 1880 it had always been assumed that when this condensation took place, the vapour molecules simply combined with each other to form the little globules of water, but J. Aitken showed that vapour molecules in the atmosphere do not combine with each other, that before condensation can take place there must be some solid or liquid nucleus on which the vapour molecules can combine, and that the dust in the atmosphere forms the nuclei on which the water-vapour molecules condense. Every cloud particle being grown round a dust nucleus thus has a dust particle in it. The presence of dust in the atmosphere allows the condensation of the vapour to take place whenever the air is cooled to the saturation point, and if there were no dust present the condensation would not take place till the air was cooled far below that point, and become highly supersaturated; and when it did take place the condensation would be violent and result in heavy rain-drops without the formation of what we know as cloud. This might be in some ways an advantage, but living in such supersaturated air would have many disadvantages. The supersaturated air having no dust to condense on would condense on our clothes, the inside and outside walls of our dwellings, and on every solid and liquid surface with which it came in contact.
Many of the dust particles in the atmosphere which form the nuclei of condensation are extremely minute, so small as to be beyond the powers of the microscope, and at first sight it might appear to be impossible to get any reliable information as to their numbers. But Aitken, having shown that water vapour must have a nucleus to condense on, saw that this placed in our hands the means of counting the dust particles in our atmosphere, and in 1888 showed how it could be done. As water vapour in the air condenses on the dust particles present and forms cloud particles, he showed that all that would be necessary would be to cause the dust particles to become centres of condensation, when they would be so increased in size as to come within the range of an ordinary magnifying lens, and that by counting the cloud particles it would be possible to determine the number of dust particles. To carry out this idea the air under examination was placed in an air-tight receiver and saturated with water vapour. It was then expanded by an air-pump, and in this way cooled and condensation produced. The cloud particles so formed were allowed to fall on a micrometer and their number counted by the aid of an ordinary short-focussed lens. Certain precautions are necessary in carrying out this process. There must not be more than 500 particles per cubic centimetre of air, or all the particles will not form nuclei, and will not therefore be thrown down as cloud particles. When the number in the air tested exceeds that figure, the dusty air must be mixed with such a quantity of dustless air as will reduce the number below 500 per c.c., and the correct number in the air tested is obtained by allowing for the proportion of dustless air to dusty air, and for the expansion necessary for cooling.
Thousands of tests of the atmospheric dust have been made with this instrument at many places over the world, and in no part of it has dustless air been found; indeed it is very rare to find air with less than 100 particles per c.c., whilst in most country places the numbers rise to thousands, and in cities such as London and Paris the number may be as high as 100,000 to 150,000 per c.c.
The sources of dust particles in the atmosphere are numerous. In nature volcanoes supply a large quantity, and the meteoric matter constantly falling towards the earth and becoming dissipated by the intense heat produced by the friction of the atmosphere keep up a constant supply. Large quantities of dust are also raised from the surface of the earth by strong winds, from dusty roads and dry soil, and there is good reason for supposing that large quantities of sand are carried from the deserts by the wind and transported great distances, the sand, for instance, from the desert of Africa being carried to Europe. It is, however, to artificial causes that most of the dust is due. The burning of coal is the principal source of these, not only when the coal is burned with the production of smoke, but also when smokeless, and even when the coal is first converted into gas and burned in the most perfect forms of combustion. It results from this that while in the air over the uninhabited parts of the earth and over the ocean the number of particles is small, being principally produced by natural causes or carried from distant lands, they are much more numerous in inhabited areas, especially in those where much coal is burned. It is evident that if there were not some purifying process in nature there would be a tendency for the dust particles to increase in numbers, because though some dust particles may fall out of the air, many of them are so small they have but little tendency to settle, but by becoming centres of cloud particles they are carried downwards to the earth, and, further, these when showering down as rain tend to wash the others out of the atmosphere. We may therefore look on all uninhabited areas of the earth as purifying areas, and their purifying power seems to depend partly on their extent, but principally on their rainfall. The following table illustrates the purifying effect of some of these areas obtained from the results of hundreds of observations. The areas referred to are: (1) Mediterranean Sea, the observations being made on the south coast of France on the air blowing inshore; (2) the Alps, the observations being made on the Rigi Kulm; (3) the Highlands of Scotland, the observations being made at various places; and (4) the Atlantic Ocean, the observations being made on the west coast of Scotland, when the wind blew from the ocean.
| Mediterranean. | Alps. | Highlands. | Atlantic. | |
| Mean of lowest | 891 | 381 | 141 | 72 |
| Mean of number | 1611 | 892 | 552 | 338 |
These numbers are all low for atmospheric dust, much lower than in air from inhabited areas. On the Rigi Kulm, for instance, the number was sometimes over 10,000 per c.c. when the wind was from inhabited areas and the sun causing ascending currents; and at the same place as the Atlantic air was tested the numbers went up to over 5000 per c.c. when the wind blew from the inhabited areas of Scotland, though the distance to the nearest was over 60 m.
E. D. Fridlander[1] made many observations on the dust of the atmosphere with the same instrument as employed by Aitken. In crossing the Atlantic he got no low numbers, always over 2000 per c.c., but in the Gulf of St Lawrence he got a reading as low as 280 per c.c. In crossing the Pacific the lowest obtained was 245, in the Indian Ocean 243, in the Arabian Sea 280, in the Red Sea 383, and in the Mediterranean 875 per c.c. He has also made observations in Switzerland. The lowest number obtained by him was in the air at the top of the Bieshorn, 13,600 ft. above sea-level, where the number was as low as 157 per c.c. Professor G. Melander[2] of Helsingfors studied the dust in the atmosphere. His observations were made in Switzerland, Biskra in the Sahara, Finland, the borders of Russia, and in Norway; but in none of these places were low numbers observed. The minimum numbers were over 300 per c.c., while maximum numbers in some cases went high.
Aitken when observing on the Rigi Kulm noticed during some
