Columbium the correct name for Rose’s Niobium. 393 
A few years afterwards, Dr. Wollaston conceived that he had 
succeeded in establishing that columbium and tantalum are iden- 
‘tical; and this view was tacitly acquiesced in by the greater por- 
tion of the chemical public for many years, the metal and its ores 
usually obtaining in this country the names of columbium and 
columbite, and on the Continent the names of tantalum, and 
tantalite and yttrotantalite. A mineral was also discovered at 
Bodenmais, which was held to contain this same metal. 
This state of things continued till about 1846, when M. H. 
Rose of Berlin published a series of researches on the ores from 
these different localities, from which, so far as I can understand 
the matter, he drew the following conclusions: first, that the 
metal in the Swedish tantalite is a distinct metal, with its pecu- 
liar oxygen acid and other combinations, and for this metal, the 
name of tantalum may be with great propriety reserved, being 
the metal discovered by Ekeberg, and by him called tantalum ; 
secondly, that in the Bodenmais and American minerals two met- 
als are contained, which M. Rose proposed to distinguish by the 
names of Niobium and Pelopium, the latter being supposed to be 
nearly allied to tantalum, but the former quite distinct in its char- 
This view of Rose has more or less prevailed for the last eight 
years; although I confess it had always occurred to me, and occa- 
sionally I have spoken out the view, that Mr. Hatchett’s memory 
had been rather hardly dealt with, since M. Rose had left him 
entirely out of view, although truly the first discoverer of the first 
known of these metals and minerals. 
When cerium was ascertained not to be a pure metal, but to 
contain lanthanum and didymium mixed with it, no one thonght 
of dropping entirely the name of cerium. It still belongs to an 
acknowledged metal, and the rights of its discoverers are unim- 
ired, 
Precisely the same observation applies in regard to yttria and 
the new oxyds of erbium and terbium. 
Other examples of the same kind might be quoted. 
Now, on the authority of such precedents, when it was thought 
to be ascertained that the American columbite and the analogous 
Bodenmais mineral did not contain one new metal only, but at 
least two, justice seems to have required that the name of colum- 
. 
bium should have been reserved for the more abundant of these 
two, just as the names of cerium and of yttrium have been pre- 
served | | | 
But how much more strongly does such a view hold good now, 
when it has been announced by M. Rose that the American and 
odenmais mineral contain only one metal, and for this metal he 
actually proposes the name of niobium:} Does it not follow very 
* See Chemical Gazette, vol. iv, p. 349. } Ibid, vol. xii, p. 149, 
Seconp Serres, Vol. XVIII, No. 54.—Nov., 1854. 50 
