Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 409 



'to 



The author is of opinion that the evidence on which the modern 

 theory of the composition of water is founded, is fallacious ; and 

 believing water to be a simple body, he conceives that it forms 

 hydrogen by combining with the electric fluid, which he imagines 

 to be identical with the phlogiston of former chemists. He cites 

 the opinions of Priestley, Cavendish and Watt, as corroborating his 

 views, and interprets their experiments in conformity with the hypo- 

 thesis he has adopted. 



" Suggestion intended to confirm Franklin's Theory of Electro- 

 statics, by explaining the phenomena of Repulsion between bodies 

 negatively electric." By James A. Smith, Esq. Communicated by 

 S. Hunter Christie, Esq., Sec. R.S., &c. 



The author conceives that in negatively electrified bodies, or 

 bodies having less than their natural quantity of electricity, the re- 

 dundant matter must have a tendency to escape, and thus the equi- 

 librium of its cohesion is destroyed ; and that two bodies in such a 

 condition must mutually repel each other. 



" On Sir Isaac Newton's Method of Finding the Limits of the 

 Roots of Equations." By Herbert Panmure Ribton, Esq. Com- 

 municated by John George Children, Esq., F.R.S. 



The author states that he has reason to believe that by general- 

 izing from successive inductions of equations, a formula more uni- 

 versal than Newton's Binomial could be found. 



LX. Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 



ON A NEW METAL, PELOPIUM, CONTAINED IN THE BAVARIAN 

 TANTALITE. BY PROF. H, ROSE. 



TN a former paper, on the composition of the so-called tantalic acid 

 -*- which occurs in the columbite of Bodenmais in Bavaria, I showed 

 that it consisted of two acids, one of which differs so decidedly from 

 all known metallic oxides, that I did not hesitate to regard it as the 

 oxide of a new metal, which I named niobium *. I did not then enter 

 into a description of the second acid, which occurs in company with 

 the niobic acid, but merely observed that it possessed great simi- 

 larity to the tantalic acid procured from the Finland tantalites. 



The separation of the two acids according to the method I for- 

 merly described was exceedingly troublesome and tedious. After I 

 had suspected a peculiar substance in the so-called tantalic acid from 

 columbite, and had vainly attempted in various ways to isolate it, I 

 succeeded in effecting this only approximatively on converting the 

 acid into chloride, by mixing it with charcoal and passing a current 

 of chlorine over the heated mixture. I obtained a yellow, readily 

 fusible and very volatile chloride, and a white, infusible, less volatile 

 chloride. Both were converted by water into metallic acids, which 

 were not dissolved by the hydrochloric acid formed, but separated 

 on boiling, and could easily be freed by washing with water from 



* The paper here referred to will be found at p. 35 of the third volume of the 

 Chemical Gazette. 



