156 Mr Cormack’s Account Journey across 
platina almost instantaneously becomes first red, then white-hot, 
and continues in this state as long as there is any hydrogen gas 
acting upon it. If introduced in a quantity sufficiently consider- 
able, the gas itself will be inflamed. 
Since the preceding paper was written, M. Dobereiner has 
endeavoured to deduce a eudiometrical process from this singu- 
lar property of platina He mixes the pulverised platinum with 
a little clay, and having formed it into a mass of the consistency 
of paste, he converts it into small balls of the size of a pea. He 
then dries them, and makes them red-hot with the blowpipe, in 
order to give them solidity. He now introduces one of these 
balls into a tube of glass, shut up above, and resting on a trough 
of mercury, and containing two volumes of hydrogen gas and 
one of oxygen. The mixture of these two gases forms water in 
a few seconds. One of these balls may serve for a hundred ex- 
periments, provided it is dried in the air after each experiment. 
Art. XXV. — Account of a Journey across the Island of New- 
foundland, by W. E. CoRMACK, Esq. In a Letter addres- 
sed to the Right Hon. Earl Bathurst, Secretary of State 
for the Colonies, &c. &c., — with a Map of Mr Cormack’s 
Journey across the Island of Newfoundland 
My Lord, 
In the beginning of September 1822 I left Smith’s Sound, at 
Random Island, accompanied only by one Micmac Indian : and 
• We understand that Mr Faraday has found that palladium possesses the same 
property as platina. 
•j* My enterprising young friend Mr Cormack having communicated to me some 
notices of his journey across Newfoundland, I transmitted the same to Lord Ba- 
thurst, through John Barrow, Esq. Secretary of the Admiralty. His Lordship, 
in acknowledging Mr Barrow’s communication, says, that the journey through 
the interior of Newfoundland, is, he believes, with one exception, the only one in 
which the island had been crossed ; — that the state of the Red Indians had attract- 
ed his Lordship’s attention many years ago, as there was reason to believe that our 
people had put them to death without sufficient provocation ; hence there is no w'on- 
der that they fly from all approachers ; that it is not improbable that the Micmac 
Indians may have contributed to this indisposition to accept the advances which 
have been made them ; that Mr Cormack’s attempts to conciliate them could not 
be otherwise than interesting ; and that the publication of the notice of the journey 
has his Lordship’s sanction and approbation — R. J. 
