New Phenomena in Chemistry. 



173 



their salts or oxides when under similar treatment. These 

 discoveries not only gave to Chemistry a list of new metals, 

 but with every one actually evolved, a new amalgam. 

 Thus, to the list of amalgams known to the ancients, were 

 added numerous new compounds, while the general cha- 

 racter of the elements so associated was of the most dis- 

 similar kind. One property only seems peculiar to the 

 majority of them, softness or malleability, and ductility. 

 To this class of easily amalgamated elements belong such 

 old metals as gold, silver, copper, tin and lead ; and such 

 new metals as potassium, sodium, and calcium. 



The other class of metals is peculiar in combining but 

 slightly or not at all withpwre mercury ; and these metals, 

 like those in the preceding class, seem to have but one 

 general characteristic, the reverse of that of the first class, 

 hardness, and at times, even brittleness. 



Iron, probably, alone of all the metals known to the 

 ancients, belongs to this second class; while of the new 

 metals which seem to belong to it, chromium, columbium, 

 titanium, manganese, zirconium, and perhaps rhodium are 

 examples. Singularly enough platinum and aluminum, 

 malleable and ductile metals, appear to be attached to this 

 class by reason of the difficulty experienced in directly 

 combining them with pure mercury. It is therefore 

 plain that the proper classification of metals as regards 

 their affinity for mercury, is their separation into these 

 two divisions; the first consisting of metals that readily 

 combine with pure mercury ; the second consisting of metals 

 which refuse to combine with pure mercury, at a moderate 

 temperature. 



One of the consequences of the discoveries of Hum- 

 phry Davy, was the application of the amalgams of potas- 

 sium and sodium to purposes of exploration in Chemistry. 

 Berzelius and Pontin obtained their ammonium amalgam 

 by the direct electrolysis of aqua-ammonia in contact with 



