Mr. W. Crookes on the Discovery of the Metal Thallium. 59 



16th of May, 1862, when M. Lamy made known the new 

 metal. 



Here, again, the publication of this fact by myself on the 1st of 

 May, 1862, is ignored, and M. Dumas remarks, " No one could 

 dispute that M. Lamy was the first to isolate thallium, and so to 

 demonstrate that it is a true metal, and not a metalloid, as supposed 

 by Mr. Crookes, who never obtained it uncombined and pure." 



But notwithstanding these facts, M. Lamy has since stated 

 that the first time I described thallium as a metal was in my 

 communication to the Royal Society in June ; and still ignoring 

 my publication of that fact on the 1st of May, he repeats the 

 statement that I was ignorant of this fact until June, and then 

 he declares it was communicated to me by himself. 



It may be that, when M. Lamy read his paper to the Societe 

 Imperiale at Lille on the 16th of May, he was ignorant that I 

 regarded thallium as a metal; but he must have been aware of 

 this when he read his paper to the Academy in June, after 

 having visited the Exhibition and seen the labels attached to my 

 specimens, for Mr. Quin took the trouble to explain them to 

 him. In proof of this, I may also refer to the account M. Lamy 

 gives of his motive for coming to London in June 1862, viz., 

 "to ascertain for himself what results I had obtained, before 

 announcing to the Academy a discovery he was no longer certain 

 of having made." Why this doubt, I may ask ? He says he 

 had heard my thallium was in the Exhibition. M. Lamy has 

 not claimed the discovery of thallium itself; he only claims to 

 have been the first to isolate it, and to ascertain it to be a metal. 

 This is the discovery as to which he was in doubt whether he 

 had not been anticipated ; and his visit to the Exhibition gave 

 him ample opportunity for learning that he had been antici- 

 pated both in the discovery and in the publication of it. And 

 yet, with the full knowledge of what he saw there written, he now 

 has the hardihood to assert that I was ignorant of the metallic 

 nature of thallium until he told me. 



But M. Lamy will not recognize the evidence which he saw 

 in the Exhibition, that I regarded thallium as a metal, and had 

 so described it since the 1st of May, 1862. He still maintains 

 that, before he showed his piece of thallium in June, no one in 

 England had seen thallium; that the substance I exhibited 

 u was not thallium, and could not be thallium," but only a black 

 powder to which I gave that name. He says, no one knew it 

 was a metal; that chemists even doubted its existence as an 

 elementary substance ; that I first learnt from him that it was 

 a metal, and that having done so I hastened to communicate to 

 the Boyal Society a statement of nearly all the properties of 

 thallium he had described to me. 



