VIII. Preliminary researches on thallium

Abstract

Having so recently been honoured by the Council of the Royal Society with a grant from the Donation Fund for the purpose of defraying some of the expenses of my researches on this new element, I should not have ventured to offer to the Society so incomplete a notice as the present one, had I not within the last week heard that a continental chemist, Professor Lamy, of Lille, has recently been fortunate enough to meet with a residue containing thallium in considerable quantities, and has isolated the element and prepared several of its compounds: it therefore appears advisable at once to place on record a description of several compounds of this body obtained since the date of my first announcement of its discovery in March 1861, but which I had purposely avoided publishing in order that it might form part of a more complete memoir on the subject which I had hoped at some future day to have the honour of submitting to this Society. I trust that, under these circumstances, I may be pardoned for bringing before the Royal Society an incomplete account of this new element.