234 



NATURE 



[July 7, 1892 



Upon these principles Dr. Langer has constructed a complete 

 plant on a Liliputian scale, which has been at work in my labora- 

 tory for a considerable time, and a photograph of which we will 

 now throw on to the screen. You see here the volatilizing 

 cylinder divided into numerous compartments, through which 

 the ore is passing, and subjected to the action of carbonic oxide. 

 At the bottom the ore is delivered into the transport- 

 ing screw, passing through a furnace, and from this screw 

 into an elevator, which returns the ore to the top of 

 the cylinder, so that the ore constantly passes at a slow 

 rate through the cylinder again and again, until the nickel 

 it contains has been taken out. The carbonic oxide gas, pre- 

 pared in any convenient manner, enters the bottom of the 

 cylinder and comes out again at the top. It then passes 

 through a filter to retain any dust it may carry away, and 

 thence into a series of iron tubes built into a furnace, where 

 they are heated to about 200° C. In these tubes the nickel car- 

 bonyl carried off by the carbonic oxide is completely decomposed, 

 and the nickel deposited against the sides of the tubes is from 

 time to time withdrawn, and is thus obtained in the pieces of 

 tubing and the plates which you see on the table. 



The carbonic oxide regenerated in these tubes is passed 

 through another filter, thence through a lime purifier, to absorb 

 any carbonic acid which may have been formed through the 

 action of the finely-divided nickel upon the carbonic oxide, and 

 is then returned through a small fan into the bottom of the 

 cylinder. The whole of this plant is automatically kept in 

 motion by means of an electric motor, and the gearing which you 

 see here. 



By means of this apparatus we have succeeded in extracting 

 the nickel from a great variety of ores, in a time varying, ac- 

 cording to the nature of the ore, between a few hours and several 

 days. 



Before the end of this year this process is going to be estab- 

 lished in Birmingham on a scale that will enable me to place its 

 industrial capacity beyond a doubt, so that I feel justified in the 

 expectation that in a few months nickel carbonyl, a substance 

 quite unknown two years ago, and to-day still a gi eat rarity, 

 which has not yet passed out of the chemical laboratory, will be 

 produced in very large quantities, and will play an important 

 rdle in metallurgy. 



The process possesses, besides its great simplicity, the addi- 

 tional advantage that it is possible to immediately obtain the I 

 nickel in any definite form. If we deposit it in tubes we obtain 

 nickel tubes ; if we deposit it in a globe we obtain a globe of 

 nickel ; if we deposit it in any heated mould we obtain copies 

 of these moulds in pure, firmly coherent, metallic nickel. A 

 deposit of nickel reproduces the most minute details of the sur- 

 face of the moulds to fully the same extent as galvanic repro- 

 ductions. All the very numerous objects now produced by 

 galvanic deposition, of which Mr. Swan exhibited here such a 

 large and beautiful variety a fortnight ago, can thus be produced 

 by this process with the same perfection in pure metallic nickel. 

 It is equally easy to nickel-plate any surface which will with- 

 stand the tem.perature of 180° C. by heating it to that tempera- 

 ture and exposing it to the vapour, or even to a solution of 

 nickel carbonyl, a process which may in many cases have 

 advantages over electroplating. I have on the table before me 

 specimens of nickel ores we have thus treated, of nickel tubes 

 and plates we have obtained from these ores, and a few speci- 

 mens of articles of pure nickel and articles plated with nickel 

 which have been prepared in my laboratory. These will give 

 you some idea of the prospects which the process I have de- 

 scribed opens out to the metallurgist, upon whom, from day to 

 day, greater demands are made to supply pure nickel in quanti- 

 ties. The most valuable properties of the alloy of nickel and 

 iron called nickel-steel, which promises to supply us with 

 impenetrable ironclads, have made an abundant and cheap 

 supply of this metal a question of national importance. The 

 inspection of the few specimens of articles of pure nickel and of 

 nickel-plated articles will, I hope, suffice to show you the great 

 facilities the process offers for producing very fine copies, and 

 for making articles of such forms as cannot be produced by 

 hydraulic pressure, the only method hitherto available for 

 manufacturing articles of pure nickel. 



The first practical use of the process has been made by Prof. 

 Ramsay, who, for the purposes of a chemical investigation, made 

 this beautiful little apparatus of pure nickel all in one piece, 

 which he has kindly lent for exhibition to-night. 



I began my lecture by bringing under your notice an idea of 



NO. 1184, VOL. 46] 



Liebig's which he published fifty-eight years ago. I have shown 

 you how he himself elaborated this idea, and how it developed, 

 until within recent years it has led to results of the highest 

 scientific importance and probably of great practical utility. 



Had Liebig all these results before his " mind's eye " when 

 he penned those prophetic words I have quoted ? This is a 

 question impossible to answer. Who will attempt to measure 

 the range of vision of our great men, who from their lofty pin- 

 nacle see with eagle eye far into the Land of Science, and reveal 

 to us wonderful sights which we can only realize after toiling 

 slowly along the road they have indicated ? Whether Liebig 

 saw all these results or not, it is due to him and to men like him 

 that science continues its marvellous advance, dispersing the 

 darkness around us, and ever adding to the scope and exactness 

 of our knowledge, that mighty power for promoting the progress 

 and enhancing the happiness of humanity. 



NORTH-WESTERN DISTRICT OF BRITISH 



GUIANA. 

 AT the meeting of the Royal Geographical Society on 

 -^^ Monday evening, Mr. Everard im Thurn described the 

 general characteristics of the new district in the north-west of 

 British Guiana in the settlement and administration of which he 

 has been employed for the last ten years. The colony of British 

 Guiana he described as formed of a low swampy coast strip, 

 often below the level of the sea, densely covered with mangroves, 

 and intersected by rivers bound together by interlacing channels. 

 Farther inland the mangroves pass into forests of tropical trees, 

 which, as the land rises more steeply, are reduced to strips along 

 the rivers, and finally merge into dry grassy uplands known a> 

 savannahs. The north-western district of the colony is officially 

 defined as the territory bounded on the north by the Atlantic 

 Ocean and the mouth of the River Orinoco ; on the south by the 

 ridge of land between the sources of the Amakuru, Barima, and 

 Waini Rivers, and their tributaries, and the sources of the tribu- 

 taries of the Cuyuni River ; on the east by a line extending from 

 the Atlantic Ocean in a southerly direction to the said ridge of 

 land ; on the south and on the west, by the Amakuru River and 

 the line known as Schomburgh's line. 



Mr. im Thurn's first task was to explore his territory, and this 

 he did mainly by boat along the rivers and their connecting 

 channels, traversing country never before visited by white men. 

 The nature of this mode of travelling was very vividly described. 

 On ascending the Moruka, the country on each side of the river 

 was seen to become gradually more and more open — the river at 

 last often winding through open savannahs, and broadening out 

 here and there into pools so thickly set with water-lilies that the 

 boat was forced through with difficulty. The waterway after 

 some time leaves the river and passes along a narrow itabbo, or 

 artificial water-path, which connects the Moruka with the Waini 

 River. This connecting passage is about thirty miles long, and 

 about ten miles is semi-artificial itabbo, made by the constant 

 passage of the canoes of the Redmen through the swampy 

 savannah, and very difficult to get through. Generally, it was 

 hardly wider than the boat, and had many abrupt windings ; 

 the trees hung down so low over the water, that it was hard 

 work either to force the boat under the low-lying branches, or to 

 cut these away, and so make a passage. On either side of the 

 channel the ground is so swampy as rarely to allow foothold of 

 even a few inches in extent. The light hardly penetrates through 

 the dense roof of leaves ; and in the gloom under the roof only 

 a few aroids, ferns, lilies, and orchids, and great masses of a 

 palm previously undescribed. 



The itabbo passed, the boat turned suddenly into the Bara- 

 bara River itself, at first narrow, but soon widening and winding 

 on its course through dense and unbroken bush, chiefly com- 

 posed of the graceful, swaying manicole palms {Euterpe edulis). 

 'Very abundant, perched high up and low down among this 

 dense bush, were great quantities of an orchid with stems eight 

 and nine feet long, loaded with its countless butterfly-like yellow 

 flowers [Oniidium altissinuni). After a few miles the Barabara 

 River led into the Biara, a river of much the same character, 

 which, though naturally larger than the Barabara, was still so 

 small as hardly to deserve more than the local name of creek. 

 And, again, in a few miles the Biara carried the boat into the 

 Baramanni River, which is about 100 or 150 yards wide, and 

 very deep. This is, in fact, not a river at all, but a very elongated 

 lake or lagoon, of perhaps twenty miles in length, the lower end 



