common was, to have hitherto remained
unknown.

It is not surprising that Wöhler, when he
had got his aluminium, did not conceive a
full or exact idea of what sort of creature he
had caught in his toils. The actual presence
and existence, and the remarkable properties
of the metal extracted from clay, have been
known for more than a twelvemonth past;
but the minds of the public, and even of
learned men, have been filled with uncertainties
and doubts as to the reality of the
assertion and promises that have been made
respecting this curious and novel production.
In eighteen hundred and fifty-four M. Deville,
professor of chemistry at the Ecole Normale,
at Paris, having attentively studied the
aluminium of which M. Wöhler had only
offered a transitory glimpse, found to his
surprise that the metallic stranger displayed
very different qualifications to those which
its discoverer attributed to it. Its real
attributes are so remarkable as to encourage a
very high idea of the future prospects in store
for it.

When M. Dumas presented to the Academy
of Arts the specimens of aluminium obtained
by M. Deville, he called attention to the
sonority of the metal, which rivalled that of
the most sonorous brasses,—that of
bell-metal, for instance. This quality has not been
hitherto found in any metal in its pure state,
and is another singularity in the history of
clay-metal. Aluminium prepared by
Messieurs Ch. and Al. Tessier, according to the
conditions prescribed by M. Deville, was put
into the hands of workmen in the employment
of Messrs. Christophe and Co. The
men report the new metal to be at least as
easy to work as silver; they even state
that there is no absolute necessity to re-melt
it a second time. Hitherto, the means of
soldering aluminium had not been found,
simply on the Messrs. Tessier's authority,
because alloys of the metal had not been
tried. They declare that the desired result is
the easiest possible. By alloying aluminium
with zinc, tin, or silver, solders are obtained,
whose point of fusion is much lower than
that of aluminium itself, allowing the operation
to be performed with a simple spirit-of-wine
lamp, and even without any previous
scraping or cleaning, exactly as if they were
soldering silver. The Minister of Commerce
was applied to, to open a competition for the
manufacture of aluminium, and that the
produce of such rivalry should furnish the
material for the medals awarded at the close of
the Universal Exposition of 'Fifty-five.

Aluminium is contained in clay in the
proportion of from twenty to five-and-twenty per
cent. Greenland cryolite consists of alumi-
nium thirteen percent., sodium nearly
thirty-three per cent., and fluorine fifty-four per
cent. It is of a bright and shining white
intermediate between the colour of silver
and that of platina. It is lighter than
glass; its tenacity is considerable; it is
worked by the hammer with the greatest
facility, and it may be drawn into wire of
extreme fineness; it melts at a temperature
lower than the point of fusion of silver,
Here is a list of characteristics sufficient
to entitle this simple body to take rank
with the metals of daily use in the arts; but
its chemical properties render it still more
valuable. Aluminium is a metal completely
inalterable by the atmosphere; it may be
exposed without tarnishing, both to dry air
and to moist air. Whilst our usual metals—
such as tin, lead, and zinc—when recently
cut, soon lose their brightness if exposed to
damp air,—aluminium, under the same
circumstances, remains as brilliant as gold, platina,
or silver; it is even superior to the last of
those metals as to resistance to the action of the
atmosphere; in fact, silver, when exposed to
sulphurated hydrogen gas, is attacked by it,
and turns speedily black; and, consequently,
silver articles, after a long exposure to
atmospheric air, are dulled at last by the
small quantities of sulphurated hydrogen
which are accidentally combined with the
air. Aluminium, on the contrary, offers a
perfect resistance to the action of sulphurated
hydrogen, and in this respect claims a notable
superiority over silver. Again, aluminium
decidedly resists the action of acids; azotic
and sulphuric acids, applied cold, produce no
effect whatever. Thin plates of aluminium
! may be kept immersed in azotic or sulphuric
acid without suffering dissolution or even
injury. Chlorydric acid alone attacks and
dissolves it. The advantages to be derived
from a metal endowed with such qualities
are easy to be understood. Its future place
as a raw material in all sorts of industrial
applications is undoubted, and we may
expect soon to see it, in some shape or other, in
the hands of the civilised world at large.

Nevertheless, its destiny may have been in
some measure mistaken. It cannot replace
gold or silver in precious alloys, in coin, and
jewellery. The great value and merit of gold
and silver as precious metals lies in the ease
with which they are withdrawn from the
combinations in which they have been made
to enter. By very simple chemical processes,
gold and silver are with facility separated
from the compounds which contain them.
Aluminium, unfortunately, is devoid of that
property; it cannot be eliminated in its
metallic state like gold and silver from its
different compounds. Instead of aluminium
you get alumina that is to say, the base of
clay—a worthless substance. Nor can a
metal, whose origin is so widely diffused as
clay is, ever hope to be accepted, in any case,
as the representative of wealth.

Aluminium, therefore, will be exclusively
reserved for manufacturing requirements. It
will be applied to the fabrication of vessels and
instruments of all kinds in which resistance
to the action of the air and to chemical agents