394 



EECORD OF SCIENCE FOR 1886. 



sivity of the irou, aud the action iu a few seconds ceased entirely. 

 AVhen the beaker was brought back into the neighborhood of the mag. 

 net a touch of a glass rod excited again the violent chemical action. 

 Further researches are in progress. (Am. J. Sci. xxxi, 272.) 



Density of Liquid Oxygen and of Liquid Nitrogen, by S. Wroblewski. — 

 The author finds that liquid oxygen has a density of 0.6 at — IISOC. 

 and of 1.24 at —200° under a pressure of 0.02"\ The following tablp 

 gives the constants for liquid nitrogen: 



Hence the atomic volume of oxj^geu is less than 14, and that of nitro- 

 gen is near 15.5. 



The density of liquid air at —146.00 (3. and 45 atmospheres is equal 

 to 0.6. (Comptes Eendus, cii, 1010.) 



INORGrANIC. 



Bedeterminations of atomic tveights. 



Austriuni, a new Element. — Dr. E.Linnemann, professor of chemistry 

 at Prague, died iu April, 1886. Among his i)apers was found a letter 

 addressed to the Vienna Academy of Sciences, announcing the discov- 

 ery of a new element, which he called austrium, Aus. Dr. Linnemaun 

 obtained the new metal from orthite of Arendal; its spectrum shows 

 two violet lines; the wave lengths were found to be, for Aus. a-, A = 416.5, 

 and for Aus. /?, A=403.0. Prof. F. Lippich, of Prague, who presented 

 Dr. Linnemann's paper to the Vienna Academy, called attention to 

 the fact that three not yet identified lines (A = 415.56, A=416.08, and 

 A=416.47) are shown in Angstrom's atlas of the normal spectrum of 

 the sun in the neighborhood of the Aus. a line; the last of them might 



