This plan was adopted by many other investigators, most of whom employed amalgams, on account of their low meltingpoint and the consequent facility of handling. The validity of this method is discussed below (p. 27). Calvert and Johnson 9 attempted in the same way to isolate the chemical compounds which they assumed to be present in alloys, accompanied by an excess of one or the other component, but their later work 10 opened up a more fruitful field of investigation. By determining the values of certain physical constants, such as the thermal and electrical conductivity, hardness, and specific gravity of a number of alloys in a given series, and observing the manner in which the property selected varied with the composition of the alloys, they established the fact that discontinuities occur, which were rightly attributed to the presence of intermetallic compounds. The same course was followed, with important results, by Matthiessen and his collaborators, whose very extensive and accurate determinations of many of the physU cal properties of alloys placed the subject on a new basis. 11 The It is also shown that the systematic investigation of certain properties, especially of the electrical conductivity and the thermo-electric power, affords the most delicate means in * The practical methods employed in investigations of this kind are described in the author's " Metallography " (Text-Books of Physical Chemistry, ed. Sir W. Ramsay. 2nd edn. London, 1913).