Page:Experimental researches in chemistry and.djvu/457

442 to a ray of light passing through it. When fine gold-leaf was on the glass and inclined to the ray, it polarized the light, and exactly in the same manner and direction as a bundle of glass plates in the same position in the air. More light passed than when the gold-leaf was in air, but it could not be so completely polarized; the minimum light was of a pale bluish colour. A thinned gold-leaf produced the same effect, but let more common light through. l think the difference between gold-leaf and sulphide of carbon is sensibly less than that between the metal and air. The depositions of deflagrated gold, the films of gold obtained by phosphorus, and even the heated deflagrated gold, produced polarizing effects, which, though not large, were easily recognized and distinguished from the non-action of the glass. Gold-leaf and gold films on glass produced a like effect in a camphine-bath, the results being easily distinguished from those of the glass and camphine only, in places where the glass had been cleared from gold.

Films of palladium, rhodium, silver, a plate with deposited gold particles, and a layer of deflagrated silver particles gave a like result, the effect varying in degree. The sulphuret of copper before spoken of as in contrast with the metals, gave only doubtful result, if any.

Before concluding, l may briefly describe the following negative results with the preparations of gold. I prepared a powerful electro-magnet, sent a polarized ray across the magnetic field, parallel to the magnetic axis, and then placed portions of the ruby and violet fluids, also of their deposits wet and dry, also portions of the gold films, of gold-leaf, the results of deflagrations, &c., in the course of the ray; but on exciting the magnet, could not obtain any effect beyond that due to the water or glass, which in any case accompanied the substance into the magnetic field. In some cases very dense preparations of the ruby and blue deposits were employed, the intense electric lamplight being required to penetrate them.

I passed the coloured rays of the solar beam through the various gold fluids and films that have been described. For this purpose a beam of sunlight entering a dark room through an aperture with of an inch in width, was sent through two of Bontemps's flint-glass prisms, and its rays were either separated, or at once thrown on to a pure white screen; the different objects