72 URANIUM, ANTIMONY, CHROMIUM, &o 



Columbia acid . . 77*5 

 Protoxide of iron . . 18-9* 



96-4 



He gave the metal the name of columbium, from 

 Columbia, the poetical name for America ; be- 

 cause the ore which contained it came from that 

 quarter of the world. 



Discovery About two years after Mr. Hatchett's paper 

 was published, there appeared in the Memoirs of 

 the Academy of Sciences at Stockholm, the ana- 

 lysis of two minerals by M. Ekeberg, to which 

 that gentleman had given the names of tantalite, 

 and y ttrot ant alii e. The former of these minerals 

 was from Finland, the latter from the quarry of 

 Ytterby in Roslagen, Sweden. In both of these 

 minerals Ekeberg discovered the oxide of a pe- 

 culiar metal, to which he gave the name of tan- 

 talum, because it was nearly insoluble in the min- 

 eral acids. In 1809, Dr. Wollaston demonstrated 

 that the columbium of Hatchett and the tanta- 

 lum of Ekeberg were one and the same metal. 

 Berzelius, alleging that the oxide examined by 

 Hatchett was merely a mixture of columbic and 

 tungstic acids, has thought proper to ascribe the 

 discovery of this metal to Ekeberg, and on that 

 account has adopted the name tantalum assigned 

 it by Ekeberg. 



* Mr. Hatchett obtained 21 grains of peroxide of iron. But we know 

 from a subsequent analysis of Berzelius, that the iron in the ore is in the 

 state of protoxide. 



