lxxil PROCEEDINGS. 
proceed to speak of their occurrence, and then give some reasons for the 
immense interest any work in this line creates in the advanced chemical 
world. For a long time the earths were supposed to be what their name 
implies, really rare. There were reasons for this opinion. The earliest 
known specimens were among the last discovered in that period of intense 
chemical activity, the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th 
centuries, a time honored by such names as Lavoisier, Davy, Cavendish, 
Priestly, Dalton, Scheele, Berzelius, Vaquelin, Klaproth, and the elder 
Rose’s. The lack of refined chemical methods, especially among those 
who had most to do with new minerals, the lack of sharp qualitative 
tests, and the fact that in ordinary analytical methods it was easy to 
mistake these for iron or alumina, all tended to the strengthening of this 
belief. Still during all this time the ablest chemical minds turned again 
and again to the subject, and from pure love of the truth sought for the 
solution of their mysteries. There is scarcely a great chemist who has 
not at some time attacked the knotty question, and seldom, as we must 
acknowledge, did they obtain other than negative results, and, as you 
know, these are seldom published—a mistake, by the way, as we could 
avoid many pitfalls and save valuable time did we know the experience 
of others along the same lines. When the discoveries of Mosander were 
published, new interest was created, and that indefatigable worker, 
Rammelsberg, better known possibly to the mineralogical than to the 
chemical world, examined many rocks for traces of these elements. 
Thanks to his efforts, seconded by Hermann, Wé6hler and many other 
chemists, as their time permitted, and to the improved general as well as 
particular methods, the rare earths were found here and there and, we 
can now add, almost everywhere. It would now seem that like Fe. they 
are everywhere present, only in very small quantities. Zr. is lately, by 
microscopic method, proved to be present in every rock. Ce. is a com- 
mon companion of Zr., and with Ce. there are always present La. and Di. 
and usually others. Norway and Sweden, the land in which they were 
first discovered, produce but small amounts of them now. In Brazil 
Monazite sand can be shovelled up on the seashore, it is a phosphate of 
Ce., La., Di., and Th. In Llano Co., Texas, Sipylite is found in con- 
siderable quantities, as also Gadolinite and other similar minerals, 
Along the Atlantic seaboard from Virginia to Georgia, in New Jersey 
and New York, in Massachusetts, in Renfrew Co., Ont., and elsewhere 
in Canada, in Colorado, along the Andes, in India, and Australia, along 
the Ural Mountains, in Germany, in England, and undoubtedly in many 
