ABSTRACT
The chemistry of the nineteenth century can boast of a series of discoveries more brilliant and more numerous than ever belonged to any other science within a like period. And the advantage to the world must have been great, for chemistry more directly than any other branch of knowledge ministers to the useful arts and promotes the comfort and well-being of society. Potassium and sodium are extremely soft metals; they are lighter than water, upon which they float, at the same time rapidly decomposing that compound by displacing half the hydrogen, which is set on fire by the heat. The new metals which have been thus isolated all deserve the attention of the chemist; and the general reader will probably also regard with interest the processes by which two of these new metals, for which practical applications have been found, are extracted, and the properties which have caused them to be produced on the commercial scale.
