344 -Mr. Hatchett’s Analysis 
which are also brittle, but are soluble in muriatic acid, and 
strongly susceptible of magnetical impregnation. 
Phosphorus also, when combined with iron, makes it brittle, 
and enables it powerfully to receive and retain the magnetical 
properties ; so that, considering the great similarity which pre- 
vails in other respects, it may not seem rash to conclude, that 
phosphorus, (like carbon and sulphur,) when combined with 
iron in a very large proportion, may form a substance incapable 
of becoming magnetical, although, in smaller proportions, (as 
we have seen,) it constitutes compounds which are not only 
capable of receiving, but also of retaining, the magnetical pro- 
perties, even so far as, in some cases, to seem likely to form 
magnets of great power; and, speaking generally of the car- 
burets, sulphurets, and phosphurets of iron, I have no doubt but 
that, by accurate experiments, we shall find that a certain pro- 
portion of the ingredients of each, constitutes a maximum in the 
magnetical power of these three bodies. When this maximum 
has been ascertained, it would be proper to compare the relative 
magnetical power of steel (which hitherto has alone been em- 
ployed to form artificial magnets) with that of sulphuret and 
phosphuret of iron ; each being first examined in the form of a 
single mass or bar of equal weight, and afterwards in the state 
of compound magnets, formed like the large horse-shoe mag- 
nets, by the separate arrangement of an equal number of bars 
of the same substance in a box of brass. 
The effects of the above compound magnets should then be tried 
against others, composed of bars of the three different substances, 
various in number, and in the mode of arrangement ; and, lastly, 
it would be interesting to make a series of experiments on che- 
mical compounds, formed by uniting different proportions of 
