Miscellanies. 401 



. The name Niolium is from Niobe, the daughter of Tantalus, and the 

 same Pelopium from Pelops, a son of Tantalus. 



Rose states that the columbite of Bodenmais, Bavaria, and North 

 America, have the same crystalline form with wolfram. He also re- 

 marks that columbic acid, niobic acid, titanic acid, and binoxyd of tin, 

 have probably the same atomic composition, and many characters in 

 common. 



7. New Metal Ruthenium; by Prof. Klaus of Casan. (Chem. 

 Gazette, Feb. 1, 1845.) — This metal was discovered by Prof. Klaus in 

 the platinum residues, from which it was obtained as a salt, along with 

 salts of iridium and osmium, by fusing the residues with nitre. The 

 metal as reduced was a blackish gray powder, lighter than iridium. It 

 belongs to the platina group of metals, and its chlorids resemble those 

 of iridium. The highest chlorid is of a beautiful orange-yellow color, 

 and affords, with ammonia, when in solution, a precipitate of a black 

 oxyd, while the solutions of the chlorids of the allied metals afford no 

 precipitate with ammonia at the ordinary temperature. The metal as 

 well as its compounds, yields when ignited with nitre, a blackish green 

 mass, which dissolves in distilled water to a beautiful orange liquid, 

 composed of the metallic acid and potash, (rutheniate of potash.) 

 This solution blackens organic substances, and is decomposed by alco- 

 hol, the acids, &c. with the deposition of a velvet-black compound of 

 the oxyd with potash, soluble in muriatic acid and forming thus the 

 orange-yellow chlorid. The chlorid after a long continued action of 

 sulphuretted hydrogen, deposits a sulphuret which is at first brown, and 

 finally black, the solution taking a splendid azure-blue color. The 

 oxyd of ruthenium was first detected in an ore of titanium and zirconia 

 by Osann. Osann failed to obtain the metal, but named the oxyd, oxyd 

 of ruthenium. Prof. Klaus has extracted the oxyd from the same ore. 



8. Musical Tones produced hy Magnets^ by Dr. Page, in a letter to 

 the Editors. — From the London Electrical Magazine for January, 1845, 

 it appears that the production of musical tones in magnets or iron bars, 

 by making and breaking galvanic contact with coils so arranged as to 

 act upon the magnets or bars, has of late excited some attention with 

 European philosophers, and the date of the observation of this singular 

 fact is fixed as far back as 1842. If the readers of your Journal will 

 recur to Vol. xxxii, p. 396, for 1837, and Vol. xxxiii, p. 118, for 1838, 

 they will find that I have there described this singular phenomenon of 

 the disturbance of molecular forces by the disturbance of magnetic equi- 

 librium, together with several modes of producing musical tones. 



