EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
403 
to the man.” We would, therefore, hold out the hand of 
encouragement and support, and suggest, that should the 
“ powers which be ” not think fit to authorise their publi¬ 
cation in any other way, liberty should be given to the suc¬ 
cessful essayists to do it in any manner they may deem most 
conducive to their own interests and that of the bodv of 
which they anticipate being members. 
THE NEW METAL, CAESIUM, OR SPECTRIUM, 
It will be remembered that, a short time since, we 
referred to the discovery of this new alkaline base. 
Recently, by the application of that beautiful method of 
analysis—hereafter to be noticed by us—proposed bv 
Kirchloff and Bunsen, this metal has been discovered in 
the London waters by the Messrs. F. A. and A. Dupre, 
Certain salts of it have likewise been stated by them to exist, 
as the carbonate, oxalate, and sulphate, these being inso¬ 
luble in water. Likewise the chloride, which does not seem 
to be hygroscopic. 
It may not be possible at present to say of what avail this 
discovery is. Comparatively little was, at first, thought of 
the development of the metals potassium and sodium by Sir 
H. Davy. By the aid of the last named, however, it is that 
aluminium, the metallic base of clay, has of late years been 
obtained in such considerable quantities, and applied to so 
many uses. In like manner, the singular substance gun¬ 
cotton was looked upon as merely a strange explosive com¬ 
pound, and its utility as a substitute for other substances of 
the same class more than questioned. We are now informed 
that its manufacture has been so much improved by the 
Austrian chemists that it constitutes a regular portion of the 
armaments of that country; while its projecting power being 
so much greater than that of gunpowder, and being also so 
much lighter, facilitates transport, and will soon take the place 
of this compound, and become of increased importance in war. 
We suppose that the like has obtained in Prussia, as we 
read—“ At the artillery grounds near Berlin experiments 
have been lately made with, a new species of gunpowder, 
