Page:Experimental researches in chemistry and.djvu/439

424 0.7 of a grain of metal, was made up to 70 cubic inches by the addition of distilled water and converted into ruby fluid: on the sixth day it was compared with the ruby glass standard, and with a depth of 1.4 inch was found equal to it; there was just one hundredth of a grain of gold diffused through a cubic inch of fluid. In another comparison, some gold leaves were dissolved and converted into ruby fluid, and compared; the result was a fluid, of which 1.5 inch in depth equalled the standard, a leaf of gold being contained in 27 cubic inches of the fluid. Hence looking through a depth of 2.7 inches, the quantity of gold interposed between the light and the eye would equal that contained in the thickness of a leaf of gold. Though the leaf is green and the fluid ruby, yet it is easy to perceive that more light is transmitted by the latter than the former; but inasmuch as it appears that ruby fluids may exist containing particles of very different sizes (or that settle at least with very different degrees of rapidity), so it is probable that the degree of colour, and the quantity of gold present, may not be always in the same proportion. I need hardly say that mere dilution does not alter the tint sensibly, i. e. if a deep ruby fluid be put into a cylindrical vessel, and the eye look through it along the axis of the vessel, dilution of the fluid to eight or ten times its volume does not sensibly alter the light transmitted. From these considerations, it would appear that one volume of gold is present in the ruby fluid in about 750,600 volumes of water; and that whatever the state of division to which the gold may be reduced, still the proportion of the solid particles to the amount of space through which they are dispersed, must be of that extreme proportion. This accords perfectly with their invisibility in the microscope; with the manner of their separation from the dissolved state; with the length of time during which they can remain diffused; and with their appearance when illuminated by the cone of the sun's rays.

The deposits, when not fixed upon glass or paper, are much changed by drying; they cannot be again wetted to the same degree as before, or be again diffused; and the light reflected or refracted is as to colour much altered, a might be expected. Whilst diffused through water, they seem to be physical associations of metallic centres with enveloping films of water, and