Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 499 
happily illustrated by the resolution of a word into its letters*, so we 
cannot help being reminded by this and similar transpositions of ele- 
ments, of that ingenious exercise of the mind which is afforded by 
the literary conceits called anagrams; in which the letters of a word 
are required to be transposed so as to form another word; unfortu- 
nately, however, the true chemical combination is not, in general, so 
obvious as the literal. 
*« The hypothesis of amidogen does not appear to clear up any of 
the difficulties which attach to some of the ammoniacal compounds, 
and is therefore objectionable, as unnecessarily introducing a con- 
fusion of ideas and nomenclature which is much to be deprecated in 
elementary teaching.’’—Daniell’s Chem. Phil., edit. ii. p. 671. 
LARGE MASS OF NATIVE GOLD FOUND IN THE OURAL MOUN- 
TAINS. 
Humboldt lately transmitted to the Academy of Sciences of Paris, 
a notice by M. de Koscharoff, an officer of the Russian Mines, re- 
garding a mass of gold of large size, recently found in the Oural. 
The largest mass of native gold which had previously been found in the 
Oural Mountains, weighed upwards of 22 pounds avoirdupois; and 
it is that of which there is a plaster model in the Museum of Natural 
History at Paris. On the 7th of November last, however, there was 
found in the same mountains a mass of native gold, weighing about 
80 pounds avoirdupois. 
The mines of Zarevo-Nicolaefsy and of Zarevo-Alexandrofsy, si- 
tuated in the alluvial auriferous deposits of Miass, on the Asiatic side 
of the southern portion of the Oural, have already afforded more 
than 13,300 avoirdupois pounds of gold. It was in this alluvium 
that, in 1836, the large mass of 22 pounds, and several others of 
from 8 to 14 pounds, were found ‘at the depth of a few inches under 
the surface. 
Subsequently to the year 1837, the mines of Nicolaefsy and 
Alexandrofsy seeming exhausted, new explorations were made in the 
neighbourhood, and especially along the river Tashnow-Targanna. 
Great success attended the search for gold in the marshy plain, and 
the whole valley had been searched except that part of it occupied 
by the building in which the washing operations were carried on. 
In 1842 it was resolved to remove the houses, whereupon sands 
were met with of immense richness, and lastly there was discovered, 
under the corner of a building, at a depth of three yards, a mass of 
gold weighing more than 79 pounds avoirdupois. -This mass is 
placed in the collection of the Corps des Mines, at St. Petersburgh. 
According to the information given by M. de Humboldt in the third 
volume of his Hxamen Critique de la Géographie du nouveau Continent, 
the mass of gold found in the Oural, in 1826, was inferior in 
weight to that discovered in 1502 in the alluvium of the island of 
Haiti, and inferior also to that found in 1821 in the United States, 
* “ Whewell, Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, vol.i. p. 362.” 
2L2 
