has recently been published in Germany. Wöhler had found in a mineral what appeared to him to be the oxide of an unknown metal, and he sent a specimen of the strange substance to Berzelius with an interrogation-mark. The new substance proved to be oxide of vanadium, and the fact that Wöhler narrowly escaped discovering it led Berzelius to write the following letter, which we translate entire:
Stockholm, January 22, 1831.
Notwithstanding the great advantages which his position offered in Berlin, and the favorable prospects open to him in the future, Wöhler was constrained, for domestic reasons, to resign his professorship in 1832, and to remove to Cassel, where his wife's family resided. For several years he held no official position, and occupied himself with the translation of the third edition of Berzelius's text-book of chemistry, and with the yearly reports. He spent some time with Liebig, at Giessen, where the two friends completed their important research on the oil of bitter almonds. The large supply of arsenical nickel which had accumulated as an incidental product at the prussian-blue factory in Cassel led Wöhler to invent a method by which the nickel could be economically separated, to be subsequently used in the manufacture of German silver. The process succeeded so well that extensive nickel-works were established, yielding many thousand pounds for exportation to Birmingham. He, at that time, proposed nickel as a suitable metal for coinage, but no attention was paid to the suggestion. While Wöhler was residing at Cassel, a Gewerbeschule, similar to the one in Berlin, was founded, and he was appointed to a position corresponding to the one he had held in Berlin, and was one of the three officials upon whom devolved the organization of the new institution. Afterward Professors Buff and Phillips were added to the corps of teachers.
