French National Institute. 371 
M. Fourcroy has given an account of these labours in a 
memoir, wherein he has done justice to those who have 
taken part in them. 
The following is an abridged account of these labours : 
It will be recollected that M. Descostils, in endeavouring 
to account for the various colours of the triple salts of pla- 
tina, perceived that the red colour of some of them was 
owing to some unknown metal. re 
Messrs: Fourcroy and Vauquelin on their part, on exa- 
mining a black powder which remains after platina has been 
dissolved, and finding that in some experiments a yery strong 
smelling metallic vapour arises, that in others the substance 
is manifested in a manner more fixed, they also regard this 
powder as a new metallic substance, the different properties 
of which they attribute to different degrees of oxygenation. 
But at the same time Mr. Tennant of London had exa- 
mined this same black powder, and succeeded-in decom- 
posing it once more into two different metals, the one fixed 
and the other very volatile: and Mr. Wollaston, another 
English chemist, operating upon the solution which was 
formerly thought to contain only platina, found in it two 
other metals, different both from platina and from those 
which compose the black powder. 
Thus, after the long and painful researches of which this 
singular mineral has been the object for more than forty 
years, chemistry has succeeded in producing from it eleven 
metallic substances, yiz. platina, gold, silver, iron, copper, 
chrome and titanium, found by Messrs. Fourcroy and 
Vauquelin in the sands, more or less coloured, which are al- 
ways mixed with platina. 
The two new metals discovered by Mr. Wollaston were 
palladium and rhodium ; and those discovered by Mr. Ten- 
nant were iridium and osmium *. 
The metal discovered in platina some years ago by 
M. Vauquelin and called chrome, has been discovered in 
the meteoric stones by M. Laugier, 
* Mr. Wollaston’s and Mr. Tennant’s papers have already been given in 
the Philosophical Magazine. 
Aa 2 It 
