i 9 4 
SCIENCE. 
a tendency to take the globular form, because it is the form 
in which the particles are at the least mean distance from 
the centre of gravity. As most oxides do not dissolve in 
boric acid, if the latter in its viscous state has very nearly 
the same specific gravity as the fused oxide, but is not 
miscible with it. This forms a ball with a tendency to 
occupy the centre of the bead, as oil does in water or water 
in oil, and the microscope now showed me, with reference 
to silica, that what I had supposed, looking through an 
ordinary lens, to be siliceous crystals adhering to calcium 
borate balls, formed by the mineral Wollastonite in boric 
acid were, in reality, thousands of inner transparent balls 
floating inside each calcium borate ball. 
Similarly, therefore, it may be assumed, that a second 
borate, if it is not miscible with the first borate, but if it has 
a stronger cohesion, will take the place of an inner bead, 
and so it may be presumed with a succession of oxides. 
(5). This assumption however demands the concession 
that each inner ball is a single borate, notwithstanding that 
it must obviously derive its boric acid from the containing 
borate ball, which, being ascertained, as in the case of cal- 
cium, to possess only its definite proportion of that acid, 
must in that case take the exact pioportion of boric acid 
from the outer bead, which it has to give up to the inner 
ball. 
(6). To determine therefore, by actual experiment, if the 
inner ball in the case of Wollastonite was a silico-borate of 
calcium or a simple borate, I made a large calcium-borate 
ball with pure eggshell lime, in a bead of boric acid ; ex- 
tracted it by boiling the bead in water ; made a bead on new 
platinum wire with the extracted ball ; and, applying pure 
silica to it before the blowpipe, found that it would not now 
form balls within the calcium borate, although it would do 
so readily enough when the whole was surrounded by a 
bead of boric acid. On the contrary silica, zirconia, yttria, 
glucina, alumina, etc — all the “earths” in fact, which will 
not form balls p°r se in boric acid, dissolve rapidly and 
transparently in calcium borate when held as a bead by it- 
self on platinum wire, but form balls within it when the 
whole is surrounded by a bead of boric acid, so that I sub- 
mit the conclusion, that as regards silicate of lime, the 
inner balls may be composed of anew substance, Silicon 
borate, or alternatively silicate of boron. 
(7.) I found that, as in the case of calcium hydrate (2) si- 
lica, however chemically pure, invariably gave off a certain 
amount of matter which caused opalescence in the boric- 
acid bead, before forming the inner balls above mentioned, 
from which phenomenon I argue that, if silicon borate is 
presumed to be formed, it is reasonable to infer that what 
we call silica is in reality silicon hydrate , and that a regular 
chemical interchange of components takes place. 
(8,) Alongside the inner “silicon borate” balls in the 
large calcium borate balls afforded by the mineral Wollas- 
tonite (from a Freibourg Cabinet) in a bead of boric acid, 
are numerous spherical enclosures, exhibiting under a 
j^-inch objective, a brownish amethystine color, similar to 
that impacted by manganese to borax held in an oxidising 
flame, and, on referring to the account of this mineral in 
Dana’s “System of Mineralogy, 1877,” I find that from .2 
to .9 of manganic dioxide are supposed to have been de- 
tected in certain specimens by Stromeyer, Weidling, and 
Whitney. But manganese itself forms balls per se in a 
bead of boric acid, and in tto case, within my observation, 
do ball-forming oxides produce these inner balls in cal- 
cium-borate ; indeed, from the ordinary law of physics, 
such a circumstance is an impossibility, and I have mounted 
boric acid beads of the single colored balls derived from 
manganese dioxide, and manganese silicate with lime, 
beside a bead containing the triply-enclosed colored balls 
derived from Wollastonite, which I would submit therefore, 
may be due to a New Earth of the silica type. 
MANGANESE CALCIUM BGRATE. 
a. Manganese Borate — one Calcium Borate Ball accidentally present 
(9.) I would only add here that the acid oxides, as WO,, 
Ti 0 2 , etc., which also fail to form balls per se, in boric acid, 
remaining there before the blowpipe in fragments, colored 
or not, as the case may be, form, instead of inner balls in 
