Page:Experimental researches in chemistry and.djvu/456

1857.] : acted as tin. Iron deflagrated in hydrogen: acted as tin. Zinc deflagrated in hydrogen: acted as tin. Aluminium deflagrated in hydrogen: had like action with the rest; the image brought in by it was red, which direct revolution of the analyser reduced at a little distance to a minimum, and then converted to blue. A film of mercury produced by sublimation, a film of arsenic produced in like manner, and a film of smoke from a candle, though all of them sufficiently pervious to light, did not produce any result of depolarization. Films of the smoke of burning zinc, of antimony, or of oxide of iron' produced no effect.

I placed some metallic solutions in a weak atmosphere of sulphuretted hydrogen. Gold and platinum gave no films; silver so poor a film as to be of no use; and lead one so brittle as to be unserviceable. That obtained with palladium I believe to be the metal itself. The films of sulphuret of mercury, sulphuret of antimony which was orange, and sulphuret of copper which was pale brown, all acted on the light, and depolarized it. The sulphuret of copper presented a difference from the metals generally, worth recording; it depolarized the light, producing an image, which, if not blue at once, was rendered blue by a little direct rotation of the analyser; after which the same motion brought in a minimum and then produced an orange or red tint, i. e. with the sulphuret of copper the warm and cold tints appear on opposite sides of the minimum to those where they occur when films of the metals are employed, though the minimum in both cases is in the same direction.

Many of the results obtained in the sulphide of carbon were produced also in camphine, the analyser being in each case adjusted to the minimum of light before the metallic plate or film was introduced. I pass, however, to a very brief account of some polarizations effected by the metals themselves in the sulphide of carbon, in which case the polarizing Nicol prism was dispensed with. The results show that all the dry forms of gold accord in giving the same manifestation of action on light, whatever the state of their division, provided they be disposed in a thin regular layer, equivalent to a continuous film. It was first ascertained that a plate of crown-glass in an inclined position in sulphide of carbon gave no signs of polarity