Page:Philosophical Transactions - Volume 095.djvu/355

Rh employed to form the compound, and although the whole of this powder had certainly been twice completely dissolved.

The solution formed in this case was of a peculiarly dark colour, and when I endeavoured to precipitate the platina from it by sal ammoniac, the precipitate obtained was small in quantity, and, instead of being yellow, was of a deep red colour, arising from an impurity which I did not at that time understand, but which we since know, from the experiments of Mr., is occasioned by the metal now called iridium.

The solution, instead of being rendered pale by the precipitation of the platina, retained its dark colour in consequence of the other metals that remained in solution; but, as I had not then learned the means of separating them from each other, and as the quantity of fluid which accumulated occasioned me some inconvenience, I decomposed it by iron, as in the former instances, and formed a third metallic precipitate, which could more commodiously be reserved for subsequent examination.

In this last step I committed an error which afterwards occasioned me considerable difficulty, for I found that a great part of this precipitate consisting of rhodium was unexpectedly rendered insoluble by this treatment, and resembled the residuum of the second metallic precipitate abovementioned.

As I have already communicated to this society, in my Paper upon rhodium, the process by which I subsequently avoided this difficulty, I shall at present return to a previous stage of my progress, and relate the means by which I first obtained palladium in my attempts to analyze the second metallic precipitate.