Page:The chemical history of a candle.djvu/198

196 table. The platinum being dissolved with care in acids, to the solution the muriate of ammonia was added, as I am about to add it here. A yellow precipitate was then thrown down, as you perceive is the case now; and this, carefully washed and cleansed, gave us that body [pointing to a specimen of the chloride of platinum and ammonium], the other elements, or nearly all, being ejected. This substance being heated, gave us what we call platinum sponge, or platinum in the metallic state, so finely divided as to form a kind of heavy mass or sponge, which, at the time that Dr. Wollaston first sent it forth, was not fusible for the market or in the manufacturers' workshops, inasmuch as the temperature required was so high, and there were no furnaces that could bring the mass into a globule, and cause the parts to adhere together. Most of our metals that we obtain from nature, and work in our shops, are brought at last into a mass by fusion. I am not aware that there is in the arts or sciences any other than iron which is not so. Soft iron we do not bring together by fusion, but