THE IRON-ORE SUPPLIES OF THE WORLD 373 



should arrange for an authoritative estimate to be made by an 

 international body of experts. The work was undertaken by 

 the Congress and thanks to Professor Sjogren and the Secretary, 

 Dr. Gunnar Andersson, a series of fifty-five reports has been 

 collected dealing with all the iron-producing countries of the 

 world. These have been issued by the Geological Congress in 

 connection with its recent session at Stockholm in two large 

 volumes and a folio atlas. ^ They form the most comprehensive 

 attempt yet made to estimate the total available resources of any 

 mineral, as they include the whole world in their range ; they 

 deal with an industry conducted on so large a scale that the 

 unit adopted is a million tons and of such antiquity that some of 

 the contributors refer back to the time of Alexander the Great 

 or the still earlier dawn of the iron age. 



The reports on the different countries vary greatly according 

 to the local condition of the industry. The most important 

 reports deal with Great Britain, Scandinavia, Germany, France, 

 the United States of America and Russia, the long report by 

 Professor Bogdanowitsch on this last country, owing to the 

 comparative inaccessibility of some of the literature, being of 

 special value. Some of the reports deal with countries which, 

 like Belgium, once had important iron mines, the relics of 

 these, M. Lespineux remarks, remaining as monuments of former 

 folly. There are short notes on countries such as Holland, 

 which contain only insignificant deposits of bog-iron ores far 

 too small to be of commercial value ; and there are general 

 statements from some countries in which it has not yet been 

 worth while to make an accurate survey of the ore, though the 

 amount is known to be considerable. 



The only continent of which the iron-ore supplies are 

 adequately known is Europe. Professor Sjogren considers 

 it improbable that any new deposits of the first rank will be 

 discovered in this continent but even the European estimates 

 vary greatly in value and it is probable that they may be 

 considerably increased. In the case of the British Isles, as the 

 iron ores belong to private land-owners and not to the State, 

 it is no one's business to estimate the available supplies. 



• The Iron-Ore Resources of the World. An Inquiry made upon the Initiative 

 of the Executive Committee of the Eleventh International Geological Congress, 

 Stockholm, 1910. Vol. I., pp. lxxix+5S2; Vol. II., pp. 553-1068, 22 pis., 142 figs.; 

 Atlas, 43 maps. 



