mines of platinum.

At a meeting of the Academy of Sciences of Paris, held on the 18th July last, Baron Humboldt communicated verbally to the Academy the following interesting information.

M. Boussingault, a celebrated French chemist, has just discovered a mine of platinum at Antioquia in the department of Cundinamarca.

Hitherto this precious metal, so valuable in the arts, had only been found in the Urals in Russia, in Brazil, and in the provinces of Choco and Barbacoas, on the coasts of the South Sea, but always in alluvial lands.

As this circumstance renders the discovery of M.

Boussingault much more interesting, M. Humboldt has been anxious to establish it.

He observes, that in all lands where platinum has been discovered, there are found at a very great depth the trunks of trees well preserved.

It cannot, therefore, be supposed, that, in this case, transplanted earth has been mistaken for real rocks decomposed in situ.

With regard to the platinum found in the province of Antioquia by M. Boussingault, there can be no doubt that this metal exists there in real veins in the valley de Osos, and it is sufficient to pound the materials which these veins contain, in order to obtain from them, by washing, the gold and the platinum which they contain.

M. Humboldt had not himself visited the country where M. Boussingault has discovered the platinum and gold; but experience has proved to him that almost all the auriferous soils of America belong to the formation of diorite and syenite, and it is in this formation that M. Boussingault has discovered the platinum mixed with gold.

The valley de Osos, where the platinum occurs in veins, being very near the province of Choco, from which it is separated only by a branch of the Cordillera of the Andes: this circumstance accounts for the presence of the same metal in the alluvial soils of the valley de Osos.

M. Humboldt announced at the same time, that mines of platinum had recently been found in the Uralian Mountains, in the government of Perma.

These mines are so rich that the price of platinum fell nearly one-third at St. Petersburg.

Hence we may reasonably expect that this valuable metal will cease to bear that high price at which it has hitherto been sold.

In 1824, the auriferous and platiniferous soil of the Ural produced 286 puds, which gave 5700 kilogrammes of metal, having a value of nineteen millions 500,000 francs.

The mines of all Europe together do not produce annually more than 1300 kilogrammes.

Those of Chili yield only 3000, and all Columbia furnishes only 5000.

The Ural yields at present as much gold as was ever obtained from Brazil at the time when its mines were most productive.

The maximum, which took place in 1755, was 6000 kilogrammes of gold.

At present Brazil yields only 1000.— Brewster’s Journal.