Professor Jacob Berzelius on Meteoric Stone f. 5 



and is not attracted by the magnet. This amounts sometimes 

 to several per cent. Whether the cause of the circumstance 

 be a chemical combination similar to that of the sulphu- 

 ret of manganese in helvine, or merely the adhesion to the 

 powder, was not determined by my experiments ; the latter is 

 the more probable, as sulphuret of iron is only feebly magnetic ; 

 but the first is not impossible. The sulphuret of iron is the 

 cause of the powdered meteoric stone giving out sulphurated 

 hydrogen gas when mixed with muriatic acid. 



7. Native Iron. This iron is not pure, although it is very 

 ductile. It contains carbon, sulphur, phosphorus, magnesium, 

 manganese, nickel, cobalt, tin, and copper. It is also mixed 

 with minute imbedded crystals of a combination of phosphuret 

 of iron with phosphuret of nickel and phosphuret of magnesium. 

 These crystals are insoluble in muriatic acid, and are therefore 

 separated during solution. Their quantity is not constant. Ellen- 

 bogen iron yielded 2 \ per cent, and the Pallas iron not I per cent. 

 A portion of them is so finely divided in the mass of iron, that 

 during the solution of the iron they are precipitated in the form of 

 a black powder. The cause of the Widmanstadt figures is, that 

 the foreign metals are not uniformly mixed, but separated in 

 imperfectly developed crystalline arrangements. When the 

 iron is dissolved in a solution of sulphate of iron mixed with 

 acid, the pure iron almost alone is dissolved, and these layers 

 fall in flakes. 



The simple bodies hitherto found in meteoric stones amount 

 to exactly one-third of those with which we are acquainted, Viz. 

 oxygen, hydrogen, sulphur, phosphorus, carbon, silicium, chromi- 

 um, potassium, sodium, manganese, nickel, cobalt, tin, and copper. 



The following analysis of meteoric iron may here be given, 

 and I add one made by Wehrle at the same time : 



Metallic Phosphurets, 0.480 2.211 



