TEE WORLDS ANNUAL METAL CROP 279 



Finally, there is a small amount produced annually in Sweden and 

 Norway. The total world's output in 1906 was in the vicinity of 19,- 

 000 tons. The largest use to which it is now put is in the manufac- 

 ture of an alloy with iron which is particularly hard and tough, and 

 hence suitable for armor plate. After that comes nickel coinage 

 and plating. The metal has excellent qualifications for these latter 

 purposes. It will not corrode or blacken under ordinary atmospheric 

 conditions, it takes a high polish, and its soft white luster, with a 

 faint tinge of yellow in it, is exceptionally pleasing to the eye. The 

 modern world has a genuine need of nickel, and so the production 

 will increase, but it is never likely to become as common a metal in 

 the arts as copper or lead or zinc. 



Platinum 



The heaviest of all the metals is also the rarest of those that have 

 become staple articles of commerce. It required nearly seventy-five 

 years after its discovery for mankind to find uses for it. Then its 

 extreme resistance to heat, and to the action of acids, commended it 

 to the chemist, and later to the electrician. It began to come into 

 the market in small quantities in 1824, from the region where it was 

 first found — the western foothills of the Andes in the republic of 

 Colombia. Almost simultaneously it was found in the Ural Moun- 

 tains of Eussia. The Colombian region has never been exploited or 

 worked regularly, owing to the unsettled political conditions of the 

 country, and it is figured that up to date not over 25 tons altogether 

 of South American origin have been produced, practically all of which 

 was gathered by natives in a desultory way. The Eussian field has 

 been operated regularly since its discovery, biit with little enterprise 

 or judgment or science. The metal has also been found in small 

 quantities associated with gold in the auriferous gravel deposits of the 

 Pacific coast of our own country. But up to the end of 1907 not 

 more than 160 tons altogether of platinum had been produced through- 

 out the world since its discovery, in spite of its rapidly increasing 

 price, for it is now worth, weight for weight, about 25 per cent, more 

 than gold. It is a real commercial misfortune that the two locali- 

 ties where it exists in such comparative abundance, and from which 

 it could be produced in quantity, are under the control of nationalities 

 so backward in social conditions and general civilization, that capital 

 and engineering talent hesitate to take the risks involved in the illib- 

 eral laws and disturbed conditions that prevail. The metal occurs 

 in nature generally in the pure or native state, and in the condition 

 of grains, nuggets and dust disseminated throughout deposits of 

 gravel, from which it is very easily recovered by methods similar to 

 those employed in operating gold-bearing placer mines. 



