than those last referred to. When the alloys are immersed in diluted acid, the peculiar properties which some of them exhibit, not only mark and distinguish them from common steel, and from each other, but also give rise to some considerations on the state of particles of matter of different kinds when in intimate mixture or in combination, which may lead to clearer and more perfect ideas on this subject.
If two pieces, one of steel, and one of steel alloyed with platinum, be immersed in weak sulphuric acid, the alloy will be immediately acted on with great rapidity and the evolution of much gas, and will shortly be dissolved, whilst the steel will be scarcely at all affected. In this case it is hardly possible to compare the strength of the two actions. If the gas be collected from the alloy and from the steel for equal intervals of time, the first portions will surpass the second some hundreds of times.
A very small quantity of platinum alloyed with steel confers this property on it: 1400, increased the action considerably; with 1200, and 1100 it was powerful; with 10 per cent. of platinum it acted, but not with much power; with 50 per cent. the action was not more than with steel alone; and an alloy of 90 platinum with 20 steel was not affected by the acid.
The action of other acids on these alloys is similar to that of sulphuric acid, and is such as would be anticipated: dilute muriatic acid, phosphoric acid, and even oxalic acid, acted on the platinum alloy with the liberation of more gas than from zinc; and tartaric acid and acetic acid rapidly dissolved it. In this way chalybeate solutions, containing small portions of protoxide of iron, may be readily obtained.
The cause of the increased action of acids on this and similar alloys, is, as the President of this Society suggested to us, probably electrical. It may be considered as occasioned by the alloying metal existing in such a state in the mass, that its particles form voltaic combinations with the particles of steel, either directly or by producing a definite alloy, which is diffused through the rest of the steel; in which case the whole mass would be a series of such voltaic combinations: or it may be occasioned by the liberation, on the first action of the acid, of particles, which, if not pure platinum, contain, as has been shown, a very large proportion of that metal, and
