Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from On Certain New Phenomena in Chemistry: Read Before the Albany Institute, January 2, 1872
The other class of metals is peculiar in combining but slightly or not at all with pure mercury and these metals, like those in the preceding class, seem to have but one general characteristic, the reverse of that of the first class, hardness, and at times, even brittleness.
Iron, probably, alone of all the metals known to the ancients, belongs to this second class; while of the new metals which seem to belong to it, chromium, columbium, titanium, manganese, zirconium, and perhaps rhodium are examples. Singularly enough platinum and aluminum, malleable and ductile metals, appear to be attached to this class by reason of the difficulty experienced in directly combining them with pure mercury. It is therefore plain that the proper classification of metals as regards their affinity for mercury, is their separation into these two divisions; the first consisting of metals that readily combine with pure mercury; the second consisting of metals which refuse to combine with pure mercury, at a moderate temperature.
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