16 Dr. J. W. Webster's Examination 



of the iron to the same magnet was found, in successive trials, 

 to lift from eighty to ninety times its weight of a silver chain 

 adapted to this inquiry. 



By a similar mode of trial, I found that cobalt carried from 

 fifty to sixty times its weight, and that a similar quantity of 

 nickel supported from twenty to thirty times its own weight 

 by the same magnet. 



From the above comparison of the magnetic forces, it is 

 evident that the presence of about ^ jo P art of iron as an alloy 

 in the metallic titanium, would be sufficient to account for 

 this power, without regarding titanium itself as a magnetic 

 metal : and its origin in the midst of iron Q-ives every reason 

 to suspect that it would be contaminated by some proportion 

 of that metal. 



It is, however, extremely difficult really to detect the pre- 

 sence of so small a proportion of iron, on account of the high 

 colour of the precipitates of titanium. For though it may be 

 easy to produce an appearance of blue by using a prussiate, 

 which already contains iron, and is consequently better adapted 

 to prove the absence of iron where no blueness appears, than 

 to ascertain its presence, it is by no means easy to obtain the 

 more indisputable evidence of iron by infusion of galls. It is 

 only by repeated evaporation of the muriatic solution, and 

 continued exposure of the residuum to the temperature of 

 boiling water, that I have succeeded in separating enough of 

 the titanium to allow die blackness of gallate of iron to ap- 

 pear, when the efflorescent edges of the dried salt are touched 

 with infusion of galls. 



Although the quantity thus rendered sensible does not ap- 

 pear in proportion sufficient to account for the magnetic force 

 observed, there seems more reason to ascribe it to this im- 

 purity, than to suppose titanium possessed of that peculiar 

 property in a degree so far inferior to the other known mag- 

 netic metals. 



IV. Chemical Examination of a Fragment of a Meteor iv/iic/i 

 fell in Maine, August 1823. By John W. Webster, M.D. 

 * M.G.S. Lond. 4-c* 

 r T , HIS aerolite fell at Nobleborough in the State of Maine, 

 -*• on the 7th of August 1823, between four and five o'clock 

 p.m. The only information which I have been able to obtain 

 of the attending phenomena is from the papers of the day, 



* For this communication we are indebted to the kindness of the author, 

 in the ensuing Number oi* whose Journal of Philosophy and the Arts, pub- 

 lished at Boston, U. S., it will be inserted. 



and 



