1916] TREATMENT OF MOLYBDENUM ORES IN CANADA 269 
THE MINING AND METALLURGICAL TREATMENT OF 
MOLYBDENUM ORES IN CANADA. 
G. C. MACKENZIE. 
By Permission of the Director of Mines Branch. 
The opening of the great European war found the British Empire 
lacking in adequate supplies of certain metals that were urgently re- 
quired for the manufacture of munitions. We had grown so accustomed 
to securing many of these metals from foreign reduction works, that, 
rather than spend money in the exploitation of our own natural resources, 
we depended upon the foreigner to supply our requirements, because it 
was easier and cheaper to buy what he had to sell than to go to the 
trouble and expense of developing our own supplies. 
This penny-wise, short-sighted policy of the past, with its foolish 
disregard of future contingencies, has cost the Empire much lost time 
in the manufacture of munitions, and, thereby, many valuable lives of 
its brave soldiers. The experience has been costly, but the lack of these 
materials has at least brought about an awakening that promises the 
adoption of a wiser policy in the future. Not the least of these defi- 
ciencies has been the lack of the steel hardeners, tungsten and molyb- 
denum, and as these metals are important factors in the manufacture 
of modern ordnance and ammunition, the curtailment of supplies during 
the first two years of the war was a serious matter. 
The story of the production of tungsten is in itself sufficient material 
for a long article, and cannot be dealt with at the moment, and as the 
subject of this address is molybdenum, I will confine myself to a descrip- 
tion of its occurrence as a mineral and its use as a metal. 
The name Molybdena, now applied only to the metal Molybdenum 
and its compounds, really means lead, and has come to us from the 
early Greeks who used the term to describe all of the dark metallic 
sulphides. The resemblance between lead, molybdenite and “black 
lead”’ or graphite especially, is best evidenced by lack of discrimination 
between them and our retention of the ancient confused term black lead 
and lead pencil. No doubt when better means of determination arose, 
the easiest one to identify, lead, was eliminated, but the difference, 
superficially slight, did not permit classification until late in the phlogiston 
