Platinum is found in almost all the auriferous districts of the globe, but generally in such small quantities as not to be worth the collecting. Kuschwa Goroblagodat and Nishne-Tagilsk, in the Ural, furnish annually about eight hundred hundredweight, which is nearly ten times the amount from Brazil, Columbia, St. Domingo, and Borneo. But, in spite of this scanty production, its discovery must be considered as one of the most important conquests which science has made in the material world, as its perfect infusibility, its hardness, its unalterability by air and water, and its property of withstanding the action of the most corrosive simple acids, render it an invaluable material for the fabrication of various chemical vessels, without whose assistance many important discoveries could not possibly have been made. To the manufacturers of sulphuric acid large retorts of platinum are indispensable for concentrating this highly corrosive fluid, which devours every other metallic vase with which it comes in contact. The price of platinum is intermediate between that of gold and silver. The ores of Antimony played a great part in the labours of the alchemists, but the metal is first mentioned in the works of Basilius Valentinus, who flourished during the second half of the fifteenth century. It is used chiefly in several important alloys. Combined with lead it constitutes type-metal, and united with lead and tin it is employed for making Britannia metal, and the plates on which music is engraved. Nearly all the antimony of commerce is furnished by the grey sulphuret (stibnite), which occurs in Hungary, Saxony, South America, and Australia. Though Cornwall produces a considerable quantity of antimonial ore, our chief supply is derived from Singapore, the emporium of the various mines of Borneo and other parts of the Malayan Archipelago. The grey antimony ore was employed by the ancients for colouring the hair and the eyebrows, and for staining the upper and under edges of the eyelids—a practice still in use among Oriental nations for the purpose of increasing the apparent size of the eye. According to Dioscorides, it was prepared for this purpose by inclosing it in a lump of dough, and then burning it in the coals till it was reduced to a cinder. It was then extinguished with milk and wine, and again placed upon coals and blown until it was ignited, after which the heat was discontinued, lest, as Pliny says, ‘_plumbum fiat_’—it become lead. It hence appears that the metal antimony was occasionally seen by the ancients, though not distinguished from lead.