$22 Heinrich Rose. 
was engaged upon it nearly twenty years, and to within a short 
time of his death; the papers upon it extend through nineteen 
of the volumes of Poggendorff’s Annals. It was his intention 
to collect these papers into one memoir for the Berlin Academy ; 
but this purpose was not to be accomplished. 
His researches led him in the end to results in the highest 
degree curious, and without a parallel in the history of the sci- 
ence. They present the nearest approach which has yet been 
made to the transmutation of an element. Their point of inter- 
est has however been sometimes overlooked, and the research 
regarded but as a detailed account of the properties of bodies 
possessing little interest or importance. For the minerals are 
announced, which he named Niobium, from the daughter of 
Tantalus. Rose obtained, by heating the acid of the columbite 
