globular portions. A comparatively low heat, however, and one unable to cause separation of the particles, is known to alter the molecular condition of gold, and the gold-beater finds important advantage in the annealing effect of a temperature that does not hurt the skins or leaves between which he beats the metal.
It might be supposed that the annealed metal, in contracting from the constrained and attenuated state produced by beating, drew up, leaving spaces through which white light could pass, and becoming itself almost insensible through the smallness of its quantity; and if gold-leaf unattached to glass be heated carefully with oil in a tube, it does shrink up considerably even before it loses its green colour, which finally happens. But if the gold-leaf laid upon glass plates by water only be carefully dried, then introduced into a bath of oil and raised to a temperature as high as the oil can bear for five or six hours, and then suffered to cool, the plates, when taken out and washed, first in camphine, and then in alcohol, present specimens of gold which has lost its green colour, transmits far more light than before and reflects less, whilst yet the film remains in form and other conditions apparently quite unchanged. Being now examined in the microscope, it presents exactly the forms and appearance of the original leaf, except in colour; the same irregularities appear, the same continuity, and if the destruction of the green colour has not been complete, it will be seen that it is the thicker folds and parts of the mottled mass that retains the original state longest.
This change does not depend upon the substance in contact with which the gold is heated[1]. If the leaf he laid upon mica, rock-crystal, silver or platinum, the same result occurs; the surrounding medium also may change, and be air, oil or carbonic acid, without causing alteration. Nor has the gold disappeared; a piece of leaf, altered in one part and not in another, was divided into four equal parts, and the gold on each converted by chlorine gas into crystallized chloride of gold; the same amount was found in each division.
When the gold-leaf is laid by water on plates of rock-crystal,
- ↑ The disappearance of gold-leaf as metal, when mingled with lime, alumina and other bodies, and then heated, has been already observed; and referred to oxidation (J. A. Buchner). See Gmelin's 'Chemistry,' vi. p. 206, "Purple oxide of gold."
