M. Humboldt on the Discovery of a Mine of Platinum. 323 



Art. XXIII. — Account of the Discovery of a Mine of Plati- 

 num in Columbia, and of Mines of Gold and of Platinum 

 in the Uralian Mountains.* By Baron Alexander de 

 Humboldt. 



At a meeting of the Academy of Sciences of Paris, held on 

 the 18th July last, Baron Humboldt communicated verbally 

 to the academy the following interesting information. 



M. Boussingault, a celebrated French chemist, has just dis- 

 covered a mine of platinum at Antioquia in the department of 

 Cundinamarca. Hitherto this precious metal, so valuable in 

 the arts, had only been found in the Uralian Mountains in 

 Russia, in Brazil, and in the provinces of Choco and Barba- 

 coas, on the coasts of the South Sea, but always in alluvial 

 lands, where it could only be met with accidentally. As this 

 circumstance renders the discovery of M. Boussingault much 

 more interesting, M. Humboldt has been anxious to establish 

 it. He observes, that in all lands where platinum has been 

 discovered, there are found at a very great depth the trunks 

 of trees well preserved. - It cannot, therefore, be supposed, 

 that, in this case, transplanted earth has been mistaken for 

 real rocks decomposed in situ. With regard to the platinum 

 found in the province of Antioquia by M. Boussingault, there 

 can be no doubt that this metal exists there in real veins in 

 the valley de Osos, and it is sufficient to pound the materials 

 which these veins contain, in order to obtain from them, by 

 washing, the gold and the platinum which they contain. 



M. Humboldt had not himself visited the country where M. 

 Boussingault has discovered the platinum and gold ; but ex- 

 perience has proved to him that almost all the auriferous 

 soils of America belong to the formation of Dyorite and Sye- 

 nite, and it is in this formation that M. Boussingault has dis- 

 covered the platinum mixed with gold. The valley de Osos, 

 where the platinum occurs in veins, being very near the pro- 

 vince of Choco, from which it is separated only by a branch 

 of the Cordillera of the Andes, this circumstance accounts for 



* We have taken this interesting Notice from Le Globe, No. 90, July 

 .'it, 1820. 

 vol. v. no. ti. octohkr 182G. y 



