ANALYSIS OF JADE, JJJ 



ways found disseminated in it. It had no perceptible effect 

 on the raagiietic needle. 



A saussarite very distinctly marked yielded before the Fu^ed into a 

 , , ■ •, ,1 £• i.-^ pale sen till acs- 



blowpipe a greasy, semitransparent glass, or a white or p^^^gj^^ o.|^5g, 



greenish colour: but the same stone, which in this way pro- 

 duced such a glass, being exposed to the most violent heat &atagreater 

 of a wind-furnace in a platina crucible for an hour, yielded fet^iy"t"^,f^^' 

 a light brown glass, of the most perfect transparency, and rent brows 

 free from blebs both within aad at the upper surface. Some^^"^' 

 were seen in contact with the sides of the crucible. I thus 

 fused about six grammes of saussurite, which did not lose 

 by this operation any sensible portion of its weight*. 



I shall not detail the processes I employed to analyse this Analysed a* 

 stone, since they were the same as those already described, ^'i-o^h"^'; 

 I shall only mention, that, to separate the alkali, I attempted Attempt to rq. 



to treat the powdered saussurite with sulphuric acid, by p^y^^^ ^'^®^'' 

 , ... . . , . , '^ ^ , , ■ kali by sujphw- 



boiling It on it, and evaporating to dryness. 1 repeated this ric arid uuisuc- 



process with the residuum six times, powdering it each time, cessful. 

 But I could not by this process extract abov-e 0'12 the 

 weight of the stone, or deprive it of more than 0-02 of al- 

 kali. I then treated with nitrate of barytes, assisted by 

 heat, the insoluble part, which had retained the metallic 

 parts, because it had been calcined. The spongy matter 

 procured by this operation was of a greenish gray. Cold 

 water did not bring out the lilac colour, which had appeared 

 on treating the oriental jade in the same manner. This co- 

 lour was owing probably to the oxide of manganese, which 

 exists in some quantity in the oriental jade^ but was scarcely 

 sufficient to be weiglied in the specimen of saussurite, that 

 I analysed. 



* On this glass free from bleb's I radde one striking observation. It i-^g ^'g^^ 



was, that the specific gravity of the stone previous to fusion is much li^ht^erdfe softer 



than thes{,«08 

 greater than that of its glass. The specific gravity of the saussurite is itself. 



S-261: that of its glass is at most 2-8. The glass is softer than the stone, 



»ni easily scratched by it. 



A hundred 



