160 Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 



We operated first upon commercial palladium. A rectangular 

 strip of palladium not charged, suspended as above described, re- 

 quired a torsion of 16° to bring it back to its initial position. It 

 was then charged and replaced ; this time the deflection was per- 

 fectly inappreciable with our apparatus. The strip having been 

 discharged, heated to redness, resumed its magnetism. The ex- 

 periment, when repeated with specimens of the most diverse ori- 

 gin, constantly gave the same result ; a strip prepared by elec- 

 trolysis from chloride of palladium behaved precisely in the same 

 manner. 



It necessarily follows from these experiments that charged pal- 

 ladium is less magnetic than uncharged, which leads us to attribute 

 to condensed hydrogen energetic diamagnetic properties. It must 

 therefore be admitted that, as M. Wiedemann supposes, an acci- 

 dental cause may have deranged Grraham's experiments. For our 

 part, we should be inclined to accuse the impurity of the acid used 

 to acidulate the water employed to charge the palladium by electro- 

 lysis : the least trace of a ferruginous compound gives rise to a 

 deposit upon the palladium, which would account for the result 

 found by Grraham. 



Once in possession of the fact revealed by the measurements 

 above reported, we sought to make it evident by means of experi- 

 ments more simple and more easily repeated. 



Two similar strips are cut from the same piece of palladium ; and 

 then one of them is charged with hydrogen. This done, the strips 

 are arranged crosswise, and suspended by a cocoon-thread between 

 the poles of a Euhmkorff electromagnet ; the uncharged strip 

 always takes the axial position. Still more simply, an elongated 

 rectangular strip is charged only in one half of its length ; suspended 

 by a cocoon-thread in front of one pole only, the part not charged 

 always turns towards the magnet. 



These two experiments point, like our measurements, to this 

 fact, that condensed hydrogen possesses relatively powerful dia- 

 magnetic properties. In concluding, we will remark that it is not 

 unimportant in regard to theory to know that the condensation of 

 a diamagnetic body has rendered it more diamagnetic under the 

 same volume. Tyndall, in his researches on crystallized bodies, 

 was led to admit analogous facts, and to draw from them important 

 arguments for the existence of diamagnetic polarity*; his pre- 

 sumptions are found, as we see, perfectly justified by experi- 

 ments. — Comptes Rendus de VAcademie des Sciences, July 9, 1877, 

 tome Ixxxv. pp. 68, 69. 



* Phil. Mag. [4] vol. ix. p. 208 (March 1855). 



