382 Scientific Intelligence. 



torn of the water. Taking them out I found them to be phosphorus, and, 

 of course, recognized them to be the crystals I had examined the day be- 

 fore. A thermometer put into the water at the time stood at 40^ Fahren- 

 heit, which is 50° below the melting point of phosphorus. The oily drops 

 remained liquid till I got them on my hand ; but they became readily so- 

 lid, and smoked as phosphorus commonly does. This liquidity of phos- 

 phorus, at a temperature so far below its melting point, is analogous to the 

 instance of sulphur mentioned some time ago by Mr Faraday, to the in- 

 stances of tin and bismuth, discovered long ago by the late Mr Crichton of 

 Glasgow ; to those of oil of vitriol and aquafortis mentioned in the Philvso- 

 phical Transactions by Cavendish and Keir, and to the well-known in- 

 stances of Glauber's salt, and of water; in all of which the liquidity is 

 preserved to many degrees below the congealing points of the substances. 

 The melting point, therefore, is not the lowest point at which a substance 

 can exist in the hquid state, but the highest point at which it can exist in 

 the solid state. I have tried once again in summer to obtain liquid phos- 

 phorus by the means above described ; and I have succeeded ; but the 

 temperature was no lower than 58° Fah. 



III. NATURAL HISTORY. 

 MINERALOGY. 



21. Argentiferous Native Gold in the Mines of Colombia. — M. Boussin- 

 gault has found that the native gold of all the localities which he visited 

 is combined with silver in definite proportions, so that one atom of silver 

 is combined with two, three, four, to eight atoms of gold; but the gold is 

 always in a greater proportion than the silver. 



In certain mines in Siberia, on the contrary, the number of atoms of sil- 

 ver is much greater than that of the atoms of gold. Notwithstanding this 

 regularity in the combinations, M, Boussingault has never been able to 

 perceive any trace of crystallization, and he thinks himself authorized to 

 conclude, from the facts which he has collected, that these metalliferous 

 beds are not of igneous origin, or if they were, that they must have been 

 cooled with extreme slowness.— Z^e Globe, Mai 10, 1827. 



22. A New locality of Apophyllite* — During his excursions as a student 

 of geology. Professor Christison many years ago discovered a beautiful va- 

 riety of this mineral in the Chapel Quarry, near Kirkaldy in Fife. It 

 was at that time declared to be calcareous spar, and as such he pre- 

 served the specimen in his collection of minerals, but very liberally 

 presented it to me, when I had made out its true nature. The cry- 

 stals, of a grey colour, but considerably transparent, possess the form of 

 low rectangular four- sided prisms, whose solid angles are each replaced by 

 one plane, belonging to the acute isosceles four-sided pyramid of 104°2' and 

 121°0', the fundamental form of the species; and the lateral edges by 

 two planes, inclined to each other at an angle of 143°8', and yielding 



