Royal Society. 1*9 



earths appear to form alloys with the negatively electrified 

 iron. 



Mr. Davy has likewise metallized the earths by electrify- 

 ing them when mixed with various metallic oxides, such as 

 those of lead, silver, and mercury. In these cases, the me- 

 tals of the earths, and the common metals are revived to- 

 gether in alloy. 



Mr. Davy referred to some very recent experiments of two 

 Swedish chemists, M. Berzelius and Pontin, who have suc- 

 ceeded in obtaining amalgams of the metals of barytes and 

 lime by exposing the moistened earths to negalivcly elec- 

 trified mercury. Their method succeeds likewise with stron- 

 tites and magnesia, but not with alumme and silex. 



He mentioned hkewise a most interesting experiment of 

 the same gentlemen on aronionia, which seems fully to con- 

 ftrm his analysis of it, and his idea of its being an ox.de 

 'with a binary base.— When quicksilver is negatively electri- 

 fied in contact with solution of ammonia, a soft amalgam is 

 formed, consisting of nitrogene, hydrogene, and meicury, 

 which absorbs oxygene, or decomposes water with the evo- 

 lution of hydrogene, and re-produces ammonia. 



July 8. — In a paper read this evening, Mr. Davy stated 

 that he had procured the metal of barytes in a pure form — 

 that it was highly combustible, and rapidly decomposed wa- 

 ter with the production of barytes.^ This he effected by di- 

 stilling the amalgam of the basis and mercury ; and he stated 

 that by similar methods he had succeeded in obtaining the 

 metals of strontites and magnesia nearly pure. The earths 

 are mixed with red precipitate which is negatively electri- 

 fied, the amalgam is absorbed by fresh mercury, and when 

 it becomes semifluid is distilled in the vapour of naphtha in 

 a tube of plale glass. 



Mr. Davy stated his intention of entering fully, at the next 

 meeting of the Society, into the discussion of the theoretical 

 views connected with this new subject, and of its general 

 relations to Nature and to Art. 



The detection of a metallic substance in ammonia is a 

 singular and most interesting fact ; for it has been before 

 proved, to the satisfaction of chemists in geucral, that am- 



K 3 nionia 



