30 dn the supposed new Metal 



to-be tungsten, as to give a new turn to its usual habitude.* 

 and character. 



It does not appear that tungsten has ever been submitted 

 to the same experiments, nor treated exactly as the metal in 

 question ; indeed all that has hitherto been written respect-* 

 ing it seems still, involved in doubt, and frequently in error. 

 Can any thing be more ambiguous than the present history 

 of tungsten r What can we infer from such a passage as 

 the following ? — <c L'acide tunstique se fond avec les phos- 

 phates et les borates, qu'il colore en Llanc ou en vert/' 

 (Systeme des Conn. Chim.) Here it is difficult to decide 

 whether the acid gives constantly a white colour to one 

 class of these salts, and a green to the other; or whether with 

 both salts the colours are merely adventitious. It is also 

 generally affirmed that nitrous acid, which is so potent in 

 acidifying almost ev*ery basis, when poured upon tungstic 

 acid, changes it into a yellow oxide ; consequently, that the 

 addition of oxygen destroys acidity. This is surely a com- 

 plete paradox in chemistry, and cannot be fairly ranked 

 amongst anomalies. But not to dwell upon these and many 

 other instances so very open to controversy, I shall proceed 

 to offer the chief reasons on which my doubt is founded. 



At present, as no notice of the specific gravity and other 

 essential qualities of the new metal has yet been taken, either- 

 by Collet Descotils or any other writer, it is impossible to 

 draw a perfect parallel of the two metals ; more especially 

 as the history 'of tungsten is so very vague and incomplete* 

 This being the real state of the case, nothing I shall now 

 lay before you should be judged of too rigidly ; or, I hope, 

 taken in any other sense than as an attempt to promote the 

 inquiry by urging others to take it up. We have been eo 

 long accustomed to consider malleable platina, and many 

 other metals, as pure, that we need not wonder should tung- 

 sten, by industrious research, be also discovered to be ait 

 ullov, and that it has never before been produced pure and 

 isolated, 



. In comparing the new metal with tungsten, even under 

 all the disadvantages already noticed, we mav frequently di- 

 stinguish a most striking resemblance ; and in nothing so 

 much as a disposition to produce colours of a transitory 

 nature, such as from yellow to blue, blue to white, white 

 to yellow; and we may add also green and red to the list. 

 What appears an exceedinglv prominent feature in their si- 

 militude is, that the blue colour, by whatever method it has 

 been effected, is in both metals equally beautiful, and in 

 l both 



