124 Scientific Intelligence. 
The body in question may be regarded as composed of normal salt of 
definite atomic constitution, to which is added a certain excess, variable in 
amount, of cyanid of mercury ; which latter is not combined chemically 
with the normal salt, but enclosed like a foreign body in the interstices of 
its crystalline structure. 
in the residue, as it is in the normal salt. The one of which conditions 
is virtually included in the other. 
The abnormal crystals of this salt, which I have examined, agree pretty 
well with these conditions. Omitting the details for the present, it may 
be stated that the water thus calculated on the barium found, is, in gev- 
acid it effloresces and loses at last nearly the whole of its water of i 
tallization. When it is considered that the only means we possess 0 
the limits of the unavoidable errors of ‘observation. : 
Should this view be borne out by further investigation, and should i 
be admitted that crystalline bodies may hold certain of their constituents, 
or even foreign substances, in a state not of chemical but of physical oF 
crystallographic combination, this property may serve to explain the 4~ 
parent inexactness of some chemical analyses, as well as facts in mineral 
ogy which at present are not easily reconcilable with the laws of atomle 
proportion; and may show that where a deviati 
Trcunicat C. Y.— 
A ican Process of Working Platinum.—Ever since the ready 
fusibility of platinum in the flame of the oxyhydrogen blowpipe was * 
monstrated by the late Prof. Hare of Philadelphia, at the beginning 
etal has been & 
familiar one in American lecture rooms, : i 
The fact that the forging of platinum upon a manufacturing scale, 
* Annales de Chimie, xly, 135; compare ébid. xl, 81, from American Phil. Tras 
vi, 99. See also this Journal, [1] ii, 295. f first 
_ According to Bergmann (in his Hssays, London, 1788, ii, 179) platinum was ‘a 
fused by Delisle who, haying exposed chloroplatinate of ammonium “toa vale 
Violent degree of heat in a blast-furnace,” obtained a malleable metallic glo of 
; an. hi repeated the experiment, with success when the Cerys #4 
‘was small and the heat of the very intense. BE 
ising plati ith the common mouth blowpipe ( 
—v 
bi al 
