PAPERS READ IN SECTION E. 



1.— THE GEOGKAPHICAL DISTEIBUTION OF MINEEALS ON THE 

 PACIFIC LITTORAL, AND ITS INFLUENCE ON COMMERCE. 



(A Lecture to the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science — 

 Brisbane Meeting — 13th January, 1909.) 



By R. LOGAN JACK, LL.D., formerly Government Geologist, Queensland. 



Food is the primary need of mankind, as of all animals. For 

 civilised man clothing comes next; but to primitive man, in his 

 struggle to procure food, while at the same time protecting himself 

 from his enemies, implements must have been even more essential 

 than clothing. There is plenty of evidence that considerable progress 

 had been made in the arts in which metals are of service long before 

 the want of clothing made itself acutely felt. 



Many great cities — London, for instance — owed their existence 

 and progress to being favourably situated for the collection and dis- 

 tiibution of food stuffs. Others, such as Glasgow, rose into import- 

 ance by reason of the proximity of iron and coal, a combination 

 resulting in the manufacture, on easy terms, of the thousands of 

 articles, great and small, comprehended in the term " implements." 



I propose to call your attention to the distribution, over the 

 area which concerns us most nearly, the Pacific littoral, of the prin- 

 cipal ite?Tis of raw material — fuel and metallic ores — required in the 

 manufacturing industries, and to endeavour to estimate the influence 

 of their actual geographical distribution on the various centres of 

 population. 



The more valuable a commodity is in proportion to its bulk, the 

 less influence has it on the commerce of the producing country. Thus 

 gold, of which the whole world's annual production could easily bo 

 carried in a single ship of moderate tonnage, does little for the pro- 

 ducing country's export trade, although that country benefits to the 

 extent of the purchasing power of the surplus remaining after the 

 supply of its own requirements, and by the indirect advantages 

 resulting from the ultimate settlement of the producers and their 

 diversion to other industries. The same is true of silver in a less 

 degree. 



I propose, therefore, rapidly to review the distribution and move- 

 ments of the bulkier products — coal, iron, copper, and tin — in the 

 region under consideration, as a preliminary to the discussion of the 

 present and future effects of such a distribution on the commerce of 

 the Pacific. 



COAL. 



In 1868 the United Kingdom was the leading coal producer of 

 the world, with an output of 115,518,096 short tons, as against 



