CHEMICAL SCIENCE. 215 



ness so great that the metal resists the action of the file. This is copper- 

 steel. 



Titanium, obtained by exactly similar processes, and calcined in crucibles of 

 alumina, is infusible at a temperature which causes the vaporization of platin- 

 um ; it resembles very iridescent specular iron ore, and crystallizes in prisms 

 with a square base. Comptes Rendus, April 30th, 1855, p. 1034. 



ON THE 3IETAL ALUirTXtDI. 



M. "\V6hler having contested the priority of the extraction of the metal 

 aluminum from alumina with M. Deville, the latter has replied in a paper 

 before the French Academy urging that the metal he has obtained by sodium 

 and by using new apparatus, differs essentially in the distinctness of its 

 reactions from the aluminum of M. Wohler. This difference is due to im- 

 purities which can not possibly be removed when the operation is made in 

 platina vases: and he asserts that he has ascertained by minute analysis that 

 the aluminum prepared according to M. TV T 6hler's method contains soda and 

 the platina: now platina raises the point of fusion of the alloy, and the sodium 

 takes from it its most precious properties : making it subject to the influence 

 of boiling water and the weak acids, while pure aluminum resists them ; fur- 

 ther imperceptible but pure globules have remained three months in sulphuric 

 acid or weak nitric acid, and have not yet been in the least degree changed, 

 and in boiling nitric acid the dissolution proceeds so slowly that M. Deville 

 was forced to abandon that method of analysis ; lastly, if a globule of pure 

 aluminum was dropped on red hot and melted caustic soda, it resisted that 

 energetic agent. The aluminum employed in these experiments (it has been 

 analyzed) was perfectly pure, and it is upon these properties, joined to its 

 inalteration when exposed *to the air, that M. Deville grounds his hopes to 

 make it useful. It is also worth attention that while M. Wohler obtained 

 merely microscopic globules, M. Deville now produces massea of it whose 

 volume is limited only by the quantity of matter employed. He ended this 

 reply by suggesting that other more common metals than aluminum, are 

 perhaps less known than may be thought, and he expressed the hope that 

 when he shall have completed a memoir on the pure metals produced and 

 melted by certain yet secret processes, which he has long been preparing, he 

 shall exhibit some unexpected results. Thus he instanced, cobalt and nickel 

 which possess useful physical properties, such as malleability, ductility, devel- 

 oped to a most extraordinary degree ; further they enjoy a tenacity far ex- 

 ceeding that of iron, which hitherto has passed as the most tenacious metal; 

 for according to the experiments made by M. "Wertheim on these metals, the 

 weights which determine the rupture of wires of iron, cobalt, and nickel of 

 the same dimensions, are 60 for iron, 115 for cobalt, and 90 for nickel, which 

 shows the tenacity of cobalt double that of iron ; besides, nickel and cobalt 

 are worked at the forge with the same facility as iron, are oxydized less easily 

 than iron, and are susceptible of being employed in the same manner as iron. 



The following is an abstract of a report presented to the French Academy 

 on the subject of aluminum and its preparation: 



