12 jDr. Colquhoun on anew Form of Carbon. [July, 



carbon, unchanged and unalterable. And what seems at present 

 to be perhaps the most unaccountable part of the phenomenon, 

 thougn, not improbably, the apparent anomaly may itself contain 

 the elements of the future elucidation of the cause of this appa- 

 rent fusion, is that the production of these specimens in the gas 

 manufactories is neither sudden nor irregular, but the accumu- 

 lated results of a gradual process going on for days and weeks 

 together. 



It is in vain at present to offer any account or hypothesis rela- 

 tive to the source of this apparent fusion of carbon. Difficult, 

 however, as seems the chemical problem involved in the unex- 

 pected production of these aggregations, it cannot be denied 

 that too many of the facts disclosed to us by the indefatigable 

 research of modern chemistry, infer a similar appearance of 

 inexplicable incongruity, and which, like the present, it is in 

 vain to attempt to soften over or to shade away. What, for 

 example, can seem more anomalous than the immediate forma- 

 tion of a solid ingot of pure copper from the aqueous solution of 

 one of the saline combinations of that metal ? or that of regular 

 cubes of metalHc titanium, within the substance of an iron slag, 

 and which have been formed therefore at a temperature far 

 below that which is necessary to operate their subsequent 

 fusion ? 



These and other similar instances are as far from admitting a 

 satisfactory explanation or solution, as the phenomenon of car- 

 bon being found in certain cases to assume the fused appearance 

 at temperatures greatly belovv that in which it has long resisted 

 every endeavour to effect its liquefaction. But the fact remains 

 untouched, and must be fairly stated, even when it leaves all 

 theory the most at fault. At the same time, upon the supposi- 

 tion of actual fusion, or upon the far more probable assumption 

 (in the case of the steelifying process), that the particles of 

 carbon newly extricated from their aeriform state are in their 

 minutest subdivision as they cross the limit and enter upon the 

 state of a solid, and br^ing the most widely free of all relation to 

 any definite previous shape, and excluded also from communica- 

 tion with external bodies, it may be permitted to conjecture that 

 they aggregate themselves, or, as it were, crystallize, according 

 to the laws of their natural polarity, and, in the elegant and 

 lustrous tress of melallic filaments, assume an appropriate, 

 though entirely new, and previously unknown, form. 



But the solution of problems like these at present marks the 

 knowledge and the ingenuity of the chemist. How long they 

 are destined to remain among the secrets of nature, time only 

 can discover. This much at least is certain, that while the 

 details of each new chemical anomaly arc interesting to the 

 man of science froni mere curiosity, they are doubly so to the 

 philosopher who reflects, that the labour of compiling facts must 



