Die Lokal- und Mittelbanken der Schweiz

The Elements of economic geology

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1771714808

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-153366

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Rauecker, Bruno http://d-nb.info/gnd/116364661

Title:: Rationalisierung als Kulturfaktor

Place of publication:: Berlin

Publisher:: Verlag von Reimar Hobbing

Year of publication:: [1928]

Scope:: 182 Seiten

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

Usage license:: Get license information via the feedback formular.

ECONOMIC GEOLOGY and in the latter includes some constituents, which the chemist classifies as metallic. The economic geologist has two special difficulties in addition to those which attend other branches of geology. Mining destroys the ores and the evidence as to their for- mation. A shallow mine may work out a body of rich ore and remove the clues to its extension underground and its method of formation. Unless the evidence as to the origin of an ore is recorded and samples preserved while it is being worked, its contribution to the genesis of ore deposits is lost for ever. The second difficulty is the unusual complexity of the problems; their treatment by rule of thumb often ends in financial loss or structural disaster. Each problem must be investigated by reference to the principles of geology, of which sound knowledge is indispensable in the economic applications of the science. THE Sporapic DisTrIBUTION oF OrES—The first striking feature in the study of ores is their scarcity. They occur as small bodies, separated by wide oreless interspaces. The patches of ores may be so small that if marked on a true scale they would be barely visible on a map of the country, West Australia owes its development to its rich ores; but they occur at widely scattered localities. The United States is predominant in the supply of copper. It has often yielded over 60 per cent. of the world’s output; and of this amount, in 1895, nearly half came from an area of 2 square miles at Butte City. The world was long dependent for aluminium upon a single vein of cryolite in southern Greenland, for potash upon central Germany, for nickel on New Caledonia until Sudbury in Canada shared the monoply, for mercury on the mining fields of Almaden in Spain, Idria near the head of the Adriatic Sea, and California, and for platinum on the Ural Mountains. This sporadic distribution of the mining fields is repeated on a smaller scale for the ore within them, which may be limited to one vein or ore-body, and perhaps to a small part of one vein; while many neighbouring veins though appar- ently similar may be barren. ProspEcTING—The sporadic distribution of ores may appear at first sight to render their discovery possible only oy accident, and some important mineral fields were thus

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