bright blue rays, which appear in the spectrum of cæsium as two blue bands (table on p. 565). Both metals accompany sodium, potassium, and lithium, but in small quantities; rubidium occurs in larger quantity than cæsium. The amount of the oxides of cæsium and rubidium in lepidolite does not generally exceed one-half per cent. Rubidium has also been found in the ashes of many plants, while the Stassfurt carnallite (the mother-liquor obtained after having been treated for KCl) forms an abundant source for rubidium and also partly for cæsium. Rubidium also occurs, although in very small quantities, in the majority of mineral waters. In a very few cases cæsium is not accompanied by rubidium; thus, in a certain granite on the Isle of Elba, cæsium has been discovered, but not rubidium. This granite contains a very rare mineral called pollux, which contains as much as 34 per cent. of cæsium oxide. Guided by the spectroscope, and aided by the fact that the double salts of platinic chloride and rubidium and cæsium chlorides are still less soluble in water than the corresponding potassium salt, K2PtCl6,49 Bunsen succeeded in separating both metals from each other and from potassium, and demonstrated the great resemblance they bear to each other. The isolated metals,50 rubidium and cæsium, have respectively the specific gravities 1·52 and 2·366, and melting points 39° and 27° as N. N. Beketoff showed (1894), he having obtained cæsium by heating CsAlO2 with Mg(51).
Judging by the properties of the free metals, and of their corresponding and even very complex compounds, lithium, sodium, potassium, rubidium, and cæsium present an indubitable chemical resemblance. The fact that the metals easily decompose water, and that their hydroxides RHO and carbonates R2CO3 are soluble in water, whilst the hydroxides and carbonates of nearly all other metals are insoluble, shows that these metals form a natural group of alkali metals. The halogens and the alkali metals form, by their character, the two extremes of the elements. Many of the other elements are metals approaching the alkali metals, both in their capacity of forming salts and in not forming acid compounds, but are not so energetic as the alkali metals, that is, they form less energetic bases. Such are the common metals, silver, iron, copper, &c. Some other elements, in the character of their compounds, approach the halogens, and, like them, combine with hydrogen, but these compounds do not show the energetic property of the halogen acids; in a free state they easily combine with metals, but they do not then form such saline compounds as the halogens do—in a word, the halogen properties are less sharply defined in them than in the halogens themselves. Sulphur, phosphorus, arsenic, &c. belong to this order of elements. The clearest distinction of the properties of the halogens and alkali metals is expressed in the fact that the former give acids and do not form bases, whilst the latter, on the contrary, only give bases. The first are true acid elements, the latter clearly-defined basic or metallic elements. On combining together, the halogens form, in a chemical sense, unstable compounds, and the alkali metals alloys in which the character of the metals remains unaltered, just as in the compound ICl the character of the halogens remains undisguised; thus both classes of elements on combining with members of their own class form non-characteristic compounds, which have the properties of their components. On the other hand, the halogens on combining with the alkali metals form compounds which are, in all respects, stable, and in which the original characters of the halogens and alkali metals have entirely disappeared. The formation of such compounds is accompanied by evolution of a large amount of heat, and by an entire change of both the physical and chemical properties of the substances originally taken. The alloy of sodium and potassium, although liquid at the ordinary temperature, is perfectly metallic, like both its components. The compound of sodium and chlorine has neither the appearance nor the properties of the original elements; sodium chloride melts at a higher temperature, and is more difficultly volatile, than either sodium or chlorine.
With all these qualitative differences there is, however, an important quantitative resemblance between the halogens and the alkali metals. This resemblance is clearly expressed by stating that both orders of elements belong