November 22, 1917] 



NATURE 



237 



country and smelted the bulk of their pig-iron from 

 the produce of the Briey mines. Since the late 

 'eighties, with the perfecting of the basic process the 

 Lorraine district has established itself as the source of 

 the cheapest supply of steel in Europe, and in the 

 pre-war year the output from it was not much short 

 of fifty million tons of ore. From German Lorraine 

 about '300 out of 2000 million tons, and from France 

 about 200 out of 3000 million tons proved, are won. 

 "Truly, the Lorraine iron-ore district is an asset of 

 the highest national importance, and there can be no 

 doubt that, when official Germany has allowed rumours 

 of her arrogant peace terms to be bruited, the indus- 

 trialists of the Rhineland are at one with the military 

 caste of Prussia in classing Briey and Longwy as 

 essential strategic points." 



Despite their nearness to the ports of Britain, the 

 orefields of western France have not received from 

 British ironmasters the attention they deserve, and more 

 than two-thirds of their produce was, in the pre-war 

 years, exported to Germany. The ironstone formation 

 there is of Upper Arenig (Llanvirnian) age, and some- 

 what phosphoric in character. In the Normandy dis- 

 trict, within sixty miles of the port of Caen, an ore 

 reserve exceeding 200 million tons has been already 

 proved, and the output of the mines of that district 

 is expanding rapidly. The more southerly region north 

 of the mouth of the Loire, in Anjou and Brittany, is 

 as yet less well developed, but there is great hope of 

 discovery of abundant rich ores of quite similar type. 

 Western France is dependent upon English coal for 

 fuel, and it is argued that vessels carrying coal thither 

 should bring return cargoes of iron ore to British 

 blast-furnaces. 



For the production of " Swedish iron " the mag- 

 netite ores of central Sweden are generally selected by 

 hand, or, after crushing, are concentrated by the wet 

 magnetic process and briquetted. The supply of non- 

 phosphoric magnetite in Sweden is very limited, and 

 the immense magnetite lenticles of Norbotten, in Lap- 

 land, are of far greater importance to the Swedish 

 export trade. The ore mass of Kirunavaara is one 

 of the largest in the world, and is more than five 

 miles long. In general, this, as also the other Lap- 

 land magnetite masses, carries a good deal of fluor- 

 apatite, and being very dense requires a strong coke 

 to carry its burden in the blast-furnace. For this 

 reason, and because the produce from the Lapland 

 mines requires to be converted into steel by way of 

 the basic process, more than four-fifths of the ore 

 exported from Sweden has found its market in Ger- 

 many and Belgium. 



In Norway the ore masses associated with the 

 ancient schists are generally of lower grade than those 

 of Sweden, and require to be crushed, concentrated, 

 and briquetted to make them suitable for export, and 

 few of the mines have yet advanced to the producing 

 stage. From Sydvaranger, near the shores of the 

 Arctic Ocean, on the borders of Russia with Norwegian 

 Lapland, crushed ore is being sucoessfullv concentrated 

 and exported. Some hundred million tons of available 

 low-grade magnetite have been proved there lying in 

 reserve. 



Previous to the war produce from the orefields of 

 North America affected the British market rather as a 

 commercial competitor in outside markets than as an 

 alternative source of snooly. Since the outbreak of 

 war, however, the British metal market, in former 

 times largely supplied from the orefields of Lorraine, 

 has had to replace its stock with steel and iron smelted 

 in .America from .American ores. The "banded jasper" 

 ironstone formations occur in the midst of .Algonkian 

 and .Archaean sediments in the region of the Great 

 Lakes, and segrer^ation of snecular iron ore in these 

 formations has taken place along belts determined bv 

 NO. 2508, VOL. 100] 



I tectonic folding. Largest of all the ore bodies in, 



1 America are those of the Mesabi range, which district 



'■ is responsible for nearly two-thirds of the total U.S.A. 



production. For magnitude of present output, as for 



gross quantity of metal yielded in the past, the Lake 



Superior re^'ion holds precedence over all the iron- 



I fields of the world. The available reserves there are 



I enormous, and have been variously estimated at be- 



, tween 2000 and 3500 million tons, with a further 



70,000 million tons of lower-grade specular material 



I also in view. The Clinton oolitic ironstone of Silurian 



j age in the eastern States has many features in common 



with the Minette series of Lorraine. It is worked 



I extensively in the Birmingham district of Alabama, 



and as a producer of basic pig-iron its importance is 



increasing rapidly. 



The ironfields of the Overseas Empire are separated 

 from home furnaces by distances too vast for it to be 

 economical to bring so low-priced and bulky a com- 

 modity as iron ore to compete with the produce from 

 ironfields in the European countries which have no 

 coal. In Canada, Australia, South Africa, New- 

 Zealand, and India, iron is alread\' being smelted at a 

 cost less than it can be brought in from Europe, and 

 in due course we may expect to see local iron indus- 

 tries develop, perhaps to such an extent that outlying 

 portions of the Empire may send manufactured or 

 semi-manufactured metal to supply the British market. 



Among the world's great ironfields which are sup- 

 plying their raw material to tihe iron and steel indus- 

 tries only those in which the ore is to some extent 

 phosphoric have been able since the beginning of the 

 present century to increase their output on an extensive 

 scale. The development of iron-mining in the various 

 European countries and in America is shown on the 

 diagram. Fig. 3. 



The chief natural advantages which have enabled 

 this country to outbid foreign rivals in the overseas 

 markets for non-phosphoric haematite are the 

 native wealth of the home supply of fuel, 

 and the accident of geography which sited our 

 magnificent coalfields near the harbours of our 

 coasts. The high quality and cheapness of the 

 fuel have enabled this country to maintain the supre- 

 macy of its mercantile marine throughout the age of 

 steam, and this has been the dominant factor in secur- 

 ing to our ironmasters their ample haematite supplies. 

 Meanwhile, the Germans, drawing the bulk of their 

 ore supplies from deposits in closer proximity to their 

 coalfields, have been able at very low prices to put on 

 the market steel which is sufficiently satisfactory made 

 from the Minette ores of Lorraine ; and in the markets 

 of the world this product has largely supplanted the 

 lower grades of acid steel. British ironmasters, who 

 were the last to feel the pinch of haematite shortage, 

 have foreseen little commercial advantage to be ob- 

 tained by smeltinf^ the cheaper low-grade supplies of 

 home phosphoric ores, and have been reluctant either 

 to reorganise or to extend their works in order to 

 compete for low-grade trade, and only for high-quality 

 tool and special alloy steels has the British Empire 

 continued to supplv hej- former proportion of the 

 world's demands. Beaten in competition for the non- 

 phosphoric haematite supplies, only available from over- 

 seas, Germany perfected the basic method of steel 

 refining, and has certainlv made the best of the 

 mineral supplies she had at hand. America also has 

 recognised that it is cheaper to w'ork up or<^s which 

 are abundant and occur in large ma.sses in the neif*h- 

 bourhood of existinr^ transport routes, and most of her 

 recent steel works extensions have adopted the basic 

 open-hearth process of steel-making. It has paid both 

 Germany and America to adopt the basic process to 

 provide a bulk supply of steel, and it should be equally 



