November 22, 1917] 



NATURE 



235 



while the market for the vast quantities of the clay- 

 band and blaclv-band ores of the Coal Measures must 

 needs be written off. Our engineers prefer the pro- 

 duce of the haematite, but there is a shortage, and the 

 price is therefore high. There is plenty of the low- 

 grade phosphoric ore available and cheap. Surely it 

 is not beyond the skill of our metallurgists to make 

 use of it,' and obtain from it a product which, on its 

 merits, will overcome the prejudice of the British 

 engineers. This is the only domestic solution of the 

 problem of the home shortage of non-phosphoric iron 

 ore." 



Probably it has been realised by few that the total 

 quantity of metallic iron obtained from iron ore 



17 



13 



12 



00 



•^8 



'97 '98 '99 1900 '01 '02 '03 '04 '05 '06 '07 



Fig. I. — Curve showing British output of iron ore and iron obtained from British and imported ore 



brought by ship to Britain, plus the weight of metal 

 imported in the semi-manufactured state, has for 

 twenty years past been in excess of the quantity 

 smelted from ores wrought in British mines and 

 quarries. Iron ore, as imported, is generally a fine, 

 selected, high-percentage ore, but in the average of 

 home ores the percentage of iron is compulsorily low, 

 and the tendency is downwards, the average percentage 

 of metallic iron contained in them having declined 

 from 347 to 32-1 in the course of the last twenty 

 years. In the year 1913 the cost of turning sixteen 

 million tons of British ore into 51 million tons of 

 pig-iron was 17-1 million pounds, and the cost of turn- 

 ing 74 million tons of imported ore \)lus 06 million 

 tons of "purple ore," />/«.-> a small amount of scrap 

 steel turnings and mill-cinder, into 5-1 million tons of 

 NO. 2508, VOL. 100] 



pig-iron was fifteen million pounds, an advantage in 

 favour of the foreign ore of 2-5 million pounds. The 

 cost of the British ore at mine was 45 million pounds, 

 and that of the foreign ore delivered at British ports 

 seven million pounds, between which figures there is 

 also a difference of 2-5 million pounds, so that the 

 difference in cost of manufactured pig-iron made from 

 home and from foreign ore is inconsiderable. 



In the pre-war years the demand for haematite 

 among the ironmasters of the Rhineland was, as in 

 Britain, on the increase, and in consequence the 

 centre of gravity of the haematite supply showed signs 

 of a gradual shifting southwards and eastwards. In 

 the future, rising demand and heavier freights, due 

 to increasing length of rail and sea passage, are likely 

 to secure a con- 

 tinuously upward 

 trend in the price 

 of haematite, and 

 though the first 

 call for it will 

 surely remain with 

 the nation which 

 wields the trident 

 of sea supremacy, 

 a time is coming 

 when haematite 

 obtained from 

 scattered ore 

 bodies will be un- 

 able to compete 

 against the large 

 and cheaply 

 worked bodies of 

 phosphoric ores of 

 regions more con- 

 venient to the 

 coal. 



During the last 

 decade many of 

 those famous iron- 

 ore bodies occur- 

 ring in association 

 with limestones 

 equivalent in age 

 to the upper part 

 of the English 

 Gault, which were 

 opened up close to 

 Bilbao, in north- 

 ern Spain, early 

 in the 'eighties, 

 have become ex- 

 hausted, and at 

 the pre-war rate 

 of depletion the 

 kpown ore re- 

 serves of that 

 district could scarcely have lasted more than 

 another score of years. Other valuable meta- 

 somatic haematite masses have been discovered 

 further to the westward, along the Pyrenean 

 chain, and only wait for development until better 

 means of transport to seaboard are provided. In 

 southern Spain the present century has seen the be- 

 ginning of active development of iron mining, and in 

 the pre-war year an output equal to more than half 

 that from Bilbao was thence exported. 



The metasomatic haematites of .Algeria, Tunis, and 

 Morocco follow the foothills of the Atlas range. The 

 well-known mass at Beni Saf promises to become ex- 

 hausted if worked at pre-war rate for another half- 

 dozen years, but other high-class ore bodies have been 

 discovered along the line of the same unconformity. 



'09 '10 'II '12 '13 '14 'is 



