MINING INDUSTEY. 151 



also now being made to restock the exhausted lakes and rivers of tke peninsula 

 itself. An establishment of pisciculture has been founded at Hernosand, on the 

 Gulf of Bothnia, and oyster beds have been laid out at various points of the 

 Norwegian coast. The upper portions of some of the fiords, forming natural 

 reservoirs, have been utilised as preserves, where the spat is reared and protected 

 by wire work against its enemies. 



Mining Industry. 



Like the fisheries, the mining industry no longer bears the same relative 

 importance to agriculture that it formerly did in Scandinavia. The silver lodes 

 of Kongsberg and the copper veins of Roros and Falun have lost their former 

 influence in the mineral market, and even the Dalecarlian iron ores have found 

 rivals elsewhere. A few grains of gold may still be extracted from the Falun 

 mines, but those of Arendal, from which the crescent-shaped ducats of Christian IV. 

 were coined, are now abandoned, while the rivers of Lapland, containing gold 

 dust, flow through too remote and cold regions to attract gold-seekers in any 

 numbers. The richest streams are said to be those flowing from the Peldoniemi 

 group, on the frontiers of Norway and Russian Finland, towards the sources of 

 the Tana and Ivalo. In 1872 the five hundred adventurers who visited the new 

 Eldorado collected no more than from 100 to 120 lbs. weight of fine gold. 



Several deposits, which in more favoured climates would be worked by thousands 

 and surrounded, by factories, here i^emain untouched, although long pointed out by 

 geologists. Thus the copper veins of Kaa-fiord, on the shores of the Alten-fiord, 

 containing one-half of pure metal, have only quite recently been seriously worked. 

 The Skjaerstad iron ores near Bodo, on the Norwegian coast, also remain intact, 

 although rich enough to supply all the workshops in the world. So also the 

 Gellivara iron deposits in Swedish Norrbotten have only been surveyed, and the 

 surface barely scratched. The lines of railway have not yet been constructed 

 which are intended to connect this district, on the one hand, with the navigable 

 Luleâ, on the other with the Norwegian coast through a gap in the Xjolen ; yet 

 the iron beds in this part of Sweden are extremely rich. The ores, containing an 

 average of from 50 to 70 per cent, of pure metal, are disposed in parallel layers 

 between denuded masses of gneiss. Thanks to its exceptional hardness, the iron 

 has not been affected by the atmosphere, and crops out in black or red masses, 

 here and there rising to the proportion of hills. The metal contained in these 

 deposits is estimated at billions of tons. 



But in the central and southern districts of Sweden there is still iron enough 

 to meet the local demand, and allow of a considerable export trade in ores and cast 

 metal. The mines of Dalecarlia and neighbouring provinces give an annual 

 yield of from 700,000 to 900,000 tons of ore, smelted down to about 350,000 tons 

 of metal, shipped chiefly for England. The yield of copper, till recently twice 

 as great, has been unable to compete with the mines of the New World, and has 

 consequently much fallen off. Sweden also possesses several zinc mines, amongst 



