46 
heated with potassium or sodium, readily gives up its chlorine and 
assumes the elementary form. The aluminium which Wohler thus 
obtained was a grey powder; but in 1845 he succeeded in producing 
the metal in the shape of well-fused, fully metallic globules. 
Wohler, on this second occasion, correctly ascertained all the pro- 
perties which everybody now knows to be characteristic of this 
metal, and it is as w f ell to add that where Wohler’s aluminium 
differed from what now occurs in Commerce under this name, it 
differed to its own advantage. That Wohler should not have seen 
the practical importance of his discovery, is what we refuse to 
believe; if he never even suggested an attempt to manufacture the 
metal industrially, this is the natural consequence of the circum- 
stances in which he was placed. For these we now should feel 
thankful ; if, instead of quiet little Gottingen, a place like Birming- 
ham had been his abode, he would, perhaps, have been lost to 
science for all the rest of his life. 
The earlier aluminium research was followed, in 1828, by the 
isolation of beryllium and yttrium. These earlier metal reductions 
fall into the Berlin period. While in Cassel he worked out pro- 
cesses for the manufacture of nickel free from arsenic, and this laid 
the foundation for what is now a flourishing chemical industry in 
Germany. The several methods for the analysis of nickel and 
cobalt ores which he describes in his Mineral- Analyse are, w r e pre- 
sume, an incidental outcome of this work. This subject was one of 
his favourite topics; as late as 1877 we see him coming back to it 
in the publication of a short cut for the separation of nickel and 
cobalt from arsenic and iron. 
In 1849 metallic titanium arrested his attention. Since the 
days of Wollaston those beautiful copper- like cubes which are 
occasionally met with in blown-out blast furnaces, had been sup- 
posed to be metallic titanium pure and simple. Wohler observed 
that the reputed metal, when fused with caustic alkali, emitted 
torrents of ammonia, and on further inquiry ascertained the crystals 
to be a ternary compound, containing the elements of a nitride and 
of a cyanide of the metal. In pursuance of this research Wohler 
taught us how to prepare real titanium and really pure titanic acid. 
In 1854 Deville’s energetic attempts to produce aluminium in- 
dustrially, caused Wohler to turn his attention again to this early 
