112 
Mr. Hatchett’s Analysis of the earthy Substance 
he cannot absolutely determine whether this substance belongs 
to the class of earths, or that of metallic substances, yet he is 
inclined to refer it to the former. 
Professor Blumenbach, of Gottingen, in his Manual of Na- 
tural History, published in 1751, also mentions that he had exa- 
mined a portion of this earthy substance, by means of muriatic 
acid, after the manner of Mr. Wedgwood, and that he had ob- 
tained a slight precipitate by the addition of water. * 
In consequence of these experiments, the mineralogists 
throughout Europe admitted the white precipitated substance 
to be a primitive earth; and we accordingly find, in all the 
systematical works on mineralogy published since the above- 
mentioned period, that it is arranged as a distinct genus, under 
the names of Sydneia, Australa , Terra Australis , and Austral 
Sand. 
The extreme scarcity of this substance prevented the che- 
mists in general from examining more minutely into the nature 
of this new primitive earth, till Mr. Klaproth, in the second 
volume of his Additions to the Chemical Knowledge of Mineral 
Bodies, gave to the public a memoir entitled, A Chemical Exa- 
mination of the Austral Sand, -f 
In this memoir, Mr. Klaproth says, that he had received from 
Mr. Haidinger, of Vienna, two samples of this substance; one 
of which had a considerable quantity of black shining particles 
intermixed with it, which, although regarded by many as gra- 
phite or plumbago, he was inclined to believe to be Eisenglimmer 
or micaceous iron ore. 
The other contained much less of these black or dark grey 
■ 
* ILindbucb cler Naturgeschichte, p. 567 and 568. 
f Beitrcige zur Cbemkchen Kenntniss der Miner alkorper .—Zweiter Band& p. 66. 
