440 



Brown Lead Ore of Zimapan. 



of the lead ore of PouUaouen in Brittany, and of Hodristsch in 

 Hungary ; so that if this last is a phosphate also, we must con- 

 clude that they are the opposite of the isomerous bodies. Who 

 can rely now on crystals being the basis of a mineralogical sys- 

 tem ? A. Del Rio. 



REMARKS. 



We venture, for the third time, to call upon European che- 

 mists to do justice to Professor Del Rio, whose just claims, up 

 to the present moment, have been remarkably overlooked. That 

 the nature of those claims may not be misapprehended, we shall 

 briefly state them, confining our observations strictly to the facts 

 which have occurred. We feel it necessary to do so, since we 

 perceive that the merit of Professor Del Rio's discovery of the 

 new metal in question, is becoming more and more obscured, by 

 the slight weight which has been attached to it by names of 

 great eminence, and especially by the powerful name of Berze- 

 lius. The evidence of this is very abundant, but we shall go no 

 further on the present occasion than to the pages of Dr. Brewster, 

 and to those of the Philosophical Magazine and Annals of Phi- 

 losophy, on the new metal, called Vanadium, in Europe. 



In the July number for 1831, of the Edinburgh Journal of 

 Science, Mr. James F. W. Johnson has the following passage ; 



" It is a remarkable circumstance, and illustrative at once of the wide 

 diffusion of chemical knowledge, and of the progress of scientific chemistry, 

 that the new metal Vanadium has been discovered in three different coun- 

 tries nearly at the same time, and without any communication between the 

 several individuals by whom it has been observed and detected. First in 

 order of time, Professor Del Rio, of the school of Mines of Mexico, detected 

 a new metallic substance in the brown lead ore of Zimapan, to which, pro- 

 bably from its forming- red salts, he gave the name of Erythronium. His re- 

 sults were not published however, M. Collet Descotils, to whom specimens 

 were transmitted, having pronounced it to be an impure chromium. Mean- 

 time Professor Sefstrom, of the School of Mines at Fahlun in Sweden, de- 

 tected in an ore of Iron, a simple metallic body, which he named Vanadium, 

 and of which he announced some of the properties about the end of the past 

 year. The metal of Del Rio, it now appears, is the same with that of 

 Sefstrom." 



We take the following passage from the Philosophical Maga- 

 zine for November, 1831 : 



" On Vanadium. By M. Berzelius. Vanadium was discovered in the 

 year 1830 by Sefstrom, in a Swedish iron, remarkable for its ductility, ob- 

 tained from the iron mine of Jaberg, not far from Jonkoping in Sweden. 



I 



