556 



THE JIANUFACTUBE OF NICKEL. 



M. Sauvageon, a French, investigator, has discovered that cotton 

 cloth which has heen exposed for a certain time to the vapour of burn- 

 ing sulphur, assumes such an amount of incombustibility, that although 

 it will char and become brittle when held over the flame of a spirit 

 lamp, it cannot be made to take fire, while under like conditions similar 

 cloth, but unprepared in this way, is flamed immediately. If the 

 alleged facts be borne out in practice, the problem is solved, for the 

 simplest domestic means may be devised for subjecting, after being 

 washed, all white clothing to the vapour of sulphur, which will tend to 

 make it still whiter. Moreover, it may not prove necessary to repeat 

 the exposure so often. 



ON THE MANUFACTURE OF NICKEL. 



BY LEWIS THOMPSON, M.B.C.S. 



Commercial Nickel is a very impure article, and bears no more rela- 

 tion to pure nickel than brass or bell-metal does to copper. The 

 following table will shuw its average composition, as it is found in the 

 market. 









English. 



German. 



French. 



Nickel 



86-0 



84-5 



757 



80-9 



77 - 5 



Cobalt . 







6-5 



8-2 



2-2 



52 



37 



Copper . 







— 



0-6 



12-5 



77 



10-2 



Iron 







1-4 



1*1 



0-4 



1-2 



11 



Arsenic 







1-3 



0-4 



2-6 



3-8 



2-8 



Zinc 







2-0 



0-7 



4-1 



0-5 



1-4 



Manganese 







0-2 



0-8 



— 



— 



0-6 



Sulphur 







1-7 



2-2 



23 



0-2 



1-1 



Carbon . 







0-5 



0-9 



0-2 



01 



07 



Silica and Alumina 



0-4 



0-6 



— 



0-4 



0-9 



There is every reason to suppose that our accounts of metallic nickel 

 relate to an alloy of that metal with cobalt, in greater or smaller pro- 

 portion ; that in fact absolutely pure nickel has not hitherto been ob- 

 tained. Pure nickel, is however, much more easily made than pure 

 cobalt, for its affinity for oxygen is much less. Taking advantage of 

 this point, I made up a quantity of pure oxide of nickel into a paste 

 by mean* of a little water, and forced this paste through a perforated 

 earthenware plate, so as to form it into a granulated mass ; when this 

 mass had been thoroughly dried, I introduced it into a porcelain tube, 



