Ixxil PROCEEDINGS. 



proceed to speak of their occurrence, and then give some reasons for the 

 immense interest any work in this line creates in the advanced chemical 

 world. For a long time the earths were supposed to be what their name 

 implies, really rare. There were reasons for this opinion. The earliest 

 known specimens were among the last discovered in that period of intense 

 chemical activity, the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th 

 centuries, a time honored by such names as Lavoisier, Davy, Cavendish, 

 Priestly, Dalton, Scheele, Berzelius, Vaquelin, Klaproth, and the elder 

 Eose's. The lack of refined chemical methods, especially among those 

 who had most to do with new minerals, the lack of sharp qualitative 

 tests, and the fact that in ordinary analytical methods it was easy to 

 mistake these for iron or alumina, all tended to the strengthening of this 

 belief. Still during all this time the ablest chemical minds turned again 

 and again to the subject, and from pure love of the truth sought for the 

 solution of their mysteries. There is scarcely a great chemist who has 

 not at some time attacked the knotty question, and seldom, as we must 

 acknowledge, did they obtain other than negative results, and, as you 

 know, these are seldom published a mistake, by the way, as we could 

 avoid many pitfalls and save valuable time did we know the experience 

 of others along the same lines. When the discoveries of Mosander were 

 published, new interest was created, and that indefatigable worker, 

 Eammelsberg, better known possibly to the mineralogical than to the 

 chemical world, examined many rocks for traces of these elements. 

 Thanks to his efforts, seconded by Hermann, Wohler a^id many other 

 chemists, as their time permitted, and to the improved general as well as 

 particular methods, the rare earths were found here and there and, we 

 can now add, almost everywhere. It would now seem that like Fe. they 

 are everywhere present, only in very small quantities. Zr. is lately, by 

 microscopic method, proved to be present in every rock. Ce. is a com- 

 mon companion of Zr., and with Ce. there are always present La. and Di. 

 and usually others. Norway and Sweden, the land in which they were 

 first discovered, produce but small amounts of them now. In Brazil 

 Monazite sand can be shovelled up on the seashore, it is a phosphate of 

 Ce., La., Di., and Th. In Llano Co., Texas, Sipylite is found in con- 

 siderable quantities, as also Gadolinite and other similar minerals. 

 Along the Atlantic seaboard from Virginia to Georgia, in New Jersey 

 and New York, in Massachusetts, in Renfrew Co., Ont., and elsewhere 

 in Canada, in Colorado, along the Andes, in India, and Australia, along 

 the Ural Mountains, in Germany, in England, and undoubtedly in many 



