1899] Mineral Resources of the Otta\ya District. 27 



dollars, while from the mines of Quebec the output for the same 

 time was 269,771 tons with a value of 4,749,888 dollars, so that 

 the total product of the phosphate mines of the lower Ottawa 

 district, for this period, was not far from 5,000,000 dollars, 

 which, it must be allowed, is a very creditable sum and only- 

 one and a-half million dollars less than the total gold output 

 ■ from all the mines in Nova Scotia in the same time. The 

 placing on the English market, about 1890, of the cheaply mined 

 phosphates of the Southern States, which could be put on ship- 

 board at a cost of about two dollars per ton, caused a speedy 

 decline in the market for the high-priced Canadian apatite, so 

 much so that within the last three years the last of these mines 

 has been obliged to discontinue working entirely, and this great 

 source of mineral wealth is now at an end, and will probably 

 not be again utilized until the exhaustion of the southern 

 deposits has been reached. In mineral development, therefore, 

 \ye see that progress and profit are simply a matter of supply 

 and demand. In both Ontario and Quebec there are yet great 

 stores of apatite which may some day again find a market, and 

 then we can look to a return of prosperous conditions in this 

 part of our valley and the utilization of some of the large 

 amounts of capital invested in this direction. 



Mica. 



Closely allied to apatite in its associations, and to some 

 extent also in its mode of occurrence, are the deposits of mica. 

 The demand for this mineral has, however, never been so great 

 as in the case of the other, while the industry has not been 

 prosecuted lor so long a time, yet from the mica mines of the 

 Ottawa district there was marketed in the nine years from 1886 

 to 1894, a total value of half a million dollars. The occurrence 

 of mica forms an interesting subject of study, and some facts 

 have been obtained, from a close inspection of many localities, 

 that may be of general interest. Merchantable micas are of two 

 or three varieties, principally muscovite and phlogopite, with 

 the variety biotite. The first is known as a potash mica, the 



