On the Discovery and Occurrence of Minerals containing Rare Elements

Abstract

The remarkable discoveries of recent years with regard to the composition of the air, and the discovery of several new gaseous elements, have again unexpectedly directed general attention to those Scandinavian minerals which contain rare earths and acids. It will, therefore, be the more proper to give here a brief sketch of the discovery of these minerals, as most of them were not only first found in Sweden, Norway, Finland, or Greenland, but also first described by Swedish observers in the Transactions of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In doing this I shall have an opportunity of correcting some mistakes and inadvertencies of foreign investigators as to the history of these discoveries, and of showing the groundlessness of certain geological or cosmological speculations which have been induced by the unexpected observation that the new gases, when occurring in the crust of our planet, seem to be particularly associated with minerals containing rare earths. A mineral containing earths of this kind is mentioned for the first time in mineralogical literature in a paper by Axel Fr. Cronstedt, entitled ‘Experiments & Trials made on Three Iron-ores,’ and printed in the K. Svenska Veteuskapsakademiens Handlingar in 1751. One of these supposed iron-ores consisted of a substance in which there is no iron at all, namely, the greyish-white heavy mineral from Bispberg in Dalecarlia which is now called schee1ite, and from which, thirty years later, Seheele first separated the oxideof the important element wolfram. This element is still called tungstène by French chemists,