[ 5 00 3

broken, strewed here and there some reddish crystals: itwas leafy, like the mineral called by the Germans eisenrahm.Some hot water was poured on it, and more water addedso long as the liquor received any tinge. The filteredlixivium was of a yellow-green colour like the commonsolution of hepar sulphuris. On washing off the lighterparts of the undistolved matter, the remainder looked ex-actly like the eisenrahm , being in form of broad flakes, andsoft to the touch: it was also lighter than platina, and hadnot the least resemblance to it.

He mixed forty grains of this matter with an ounce ofnitre, and threw the mixture by degrees into a red hotcrucible: scarcely any detonation happened. The Arebeing kept up for an hour, with care to prevent the fallingin of any pieces of coal, there was obtained a grey massinclining to greenish, which being set to digest in distilledwater, the fluid became presently like gelly. By dilutingand washing the matter, he recovered, without alteration,the platina which he had believed to be destroyed.

This experiment appearing still indecisive, I made somefurther trials. I mixed four ounces of flowers of sulphurwith the same quantity of pure fixt alcaline salt, and threwthe mixture by little and little into a red hot crucible, co-vering the crucible after each injection.. The mixturebeing in perfect fusion, an ounce of platina, which had.been previously exposed to a strong fire by itself till thegrains were united into a lump, was dropt in, and a mo-derate heat continued for three or four hours. The lump.of platina was quickly divided, though the metal did notremain suspended in the sulphureous mixture, but subsided,,at least in great part, to the bottom, from whence it wasevery now and then stirred and taken up with the bole ofa tobacco pipe. The crucible at length cracked and wasgreatly corroded. The matter being boiled in about a

quart