8 
OUR MINERAL RESERVES. 
tins already published has devolved principally upon the geologists 
of the Survey, who for several years have made a special study of 
the country’s mineral resources. The specialists who have thus 
contributed to this bulletin are Edson S. Bastin, Ernest F. Burchard, 
B. S. Butler, David T. Day, J. P. Dunlop, Frank L. Hess, J. M. Hill, 
Edward W. Parker, W. C. Phalen, and C. E. Siebenthal. 
GOVERNMENT PUBLICATIONS. 
Several reports issued by the Government will be especially useful 
to those who are interested in mineral supplies. These publications 
furnish authoritative answers to many of the inquiries now made 
by importers and domestic consumers and by exporters and foreign 
buyers. 1 
The Geological Survey issues an annual report on " Mineral Re 
sources of the United States,” which is published finally in two 
bound volumes, but at first in about 65 separate chapters, which are 
issued as pamphlets several months in advance of the bound volumes. 
Each of these chapters treats of an important mineral product. 
Other annual publications of the Survey that contain reports on 
the country’s mineral resources are the bulletins entitled “ Contribu 
tions to Economic Geology,” published in two series—(I) metals and 
non metals except fuels, (II) mineral fuels—and “Mineral Resources 
of Alaska,” the report on the progress of investigations in Alaska. 
The separate papers in these bulletins are also issued in the form of 
advance chapters and include brief reports on geologic investiga 
tions in mining regions or on newly discovered deposits or recently 
opened mining districts. Examples of such chapters recently issued 
that are of interest in connection with the present discussion are 
entitled “ Potash in western saline deposits,” “ Nitrate near Melrose, 
Mont.,” “Late developments of magnesite deposits in California and 
Nevada,” “Analyses of coal samples from various fields in the United 
States,” and “A barite deposit near Wrangell, Alaska.” 
Another recent Survey publication is a bulletin entitled “Useful 
Minerals of the United States” (Bulletin 585), which may be de 
scribed as a directory of all the minerals that are now of recognized 
utility, with a list of localities at which these minerals occur in suffi 
cient quantity to be of present or possible future value. The direc 
tory of minerals is well supplemented by another bulletin of the 
Geological Survey, entitled “The Mining Districts of the Western 
United States” (Bulletin 507), which furnishes a complete index to 
the mineral-producing centers of the western part of the country. 
A series of maps showing the quarry localities of the country is 
contained in the 1911, 1912, and 1913 volumes of “Mineral Resources 
1 The publications here mentioned, issued by the United States Geological Survey, the 
Bureau of Mines, and the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, may be obtained 
free, until the editions are exhausted, on application to the respective bureaus at Wash 
ington, D. C.