steel now, and this has obliged the ironmasters who formerly made only iron, to change all the arrangements of their works, so that they can roll steel rails and produce steel generally instead of so`much iron. Sheffield, however, keeps up its name for certain kinds of steel work, such as the rolling of enormous ship plates for the protection of our navy, and also for cutlery, which is still principally made, after the old fashion, of Swedish iron brought to Sheffield, and there manufactured into steel. The principal steel works are found at Sheffield, at Eston near Middlesbrough, at Elswick near Newcastle, where Sir William Armstrong casts his wonderful steel guns, at Barrowin-Furness, at Glasgow and in South Wales. At least a quarter of a million persons are employed in these great industries of smelting and manufacturing iron and steel, and the amount of money invested in the trade amounts to many millions of pounds sterling.

COPPER, BRASS, TIN, AND LEAD.

COAL and Iron, though certainly the most valuable, are not the only underground riches which Great Britain possesses, for there are also large quantities of other metals, such as copper, tin and lead. The two first of these are very limited as to the localities where they are found, though in those localities they are abundant enough. They are both obtained from the counties of Cornwall and Devon,

though copper, it is true, is found on a smaller scale in some parts of the kingdom. In Cornwall, the copper occurs, not in layers like coal and iron, but in lodes, which permeate the granite rocks, and which are most irregular and uncertain in their course, so much so that a copper mine, after yielding large supplies for many years, frequently becomes so unproductive as to be scarcely worth working. Moreover, the value of copper in the market is not nearly so great as it was, owing to the extensive discoveries of copper in other countries, such as at the Cape of Good Hope, in South Australia, and North America near Lake Superior, so much so that the copper yield of Great Britain, which in 1856 was valued at nearly one and a-half million pounds sterling, decreased in 1873 to not quite half-a-million. Nevertheless, great fortunes have been made out of some of the big mines, such as the Devon Great Consols, which in twenty-one years produced between two and three million pounds worth of copper ore. Another important copper mine exists in Anglesea, at the Parys Mountain, which is of clay slate, and contains vast quantities of copper pyrites, which is obtained partly by deep mining and partly by chemical processes. Copper is also found. in the lake districts in Lancashire, in County Wicklow at the Ovoca Mines, at Knockmahon in County Waterford, and at Berehaven in County Cork. Nor must we forget Alderley Edge, a pretty hill in Cheshire, where a good deal of copper has been obtained by chemical processes from the New Red Sandstone, though it scarcely pays to carry on the work at the present time. Staffordshire used to be a very productive

camty and the mines at Ecton were very rich, but thes ave long since been unopened. Atte copper we s und so a North Wales and Yorkshire: mit Itogether we have about 15 (opper mines. yielding om (0.000 70.000 tons of ore annually. Bura reat deal more copper ore is smeited in England ham is, and venport quite as much as ve raise, from Cuba Australia, South America, Chili and the Cape.. It is a singular example of the localisation of a trade. hat copper smelting, or the reduction of the ores into nerchantable copper. is in no case carried on at the not where here s mined. There are only two copper-smelting districts in Great Britain-viz., im Lancashire, in the neighbourhood of Widnes and t Helens, and, to a far larger extent, in Glamorganshire and Caermarthenshire, where the ports of Swansea, Neath, Aberavon and Llanelly are the great centres of the trade, to which copper from all parts of the world is sent to be smeited. The whole country around these places is shrouded with a white and peculiarly unpleasant copper smoke, which has had the effect of entirely destroying vegetation for miles around, though it does not appear to be particularly prejudicial to health.

Our tin mines are principally found in the same counties as copper-viz., Devon and Cornwall, where they have been worked from time immemorial. The tin ores occur in the same lodes, and are frequently dug from out of the same mine, as, for example, ar Dolcoath, which used to be fabulously rich in copper, Jet of late years has been so in tin, while the copper has decreased and almost disappeared. Besides

the tin ore obtained from the mines (and in this respect it differs from copper, as being the only ore— viz., the binoxide, whereas copper is found in several ores), there are what are called stream works, in which the refuse washed down the rivers is treated, so as to extract the tin. Altogether, in the two counties there are 156 tin mines, and about 56 stream works, yielding from 14,000 to 15,000 tons of tin ore or block tin, which, when smelted, produce about 10,000 tons of white or metallic tin. Tin, like copper, is liable to great fluctuations of yield and price, and the tin trade of England has suffered much from foreign imports, the chief being from the Banca Mines in the Straits Settlements of the Dutch, and more recently from Queensland and New South Wales in Australia. Both tin and copper mines are often of great depth, and sometimes, as at Botallack, run a long way under the sea. They are differently arranged from the coal mines, and the miners suffer greatly from the long depths to which they have to descend, and from the high temperature. The tin smelting works are situated almost entirely in Cornwall.

The lead ores are scattered about the kingdom much more than the copper and tin ores, and are found in different geological strata-viz., the mountain limestone or carboniferous rocks, and the slatey Silurian rocks. In the former group are lead mines (the ore being found in lodes) in Northumberland and Yorkshire, at the heads of Teesdale, Swaledale and Wharfedale. Alston in Northumberland, and Pateley Bridge and Grassington in Yorkshire, are the centres

of these lead-mining districts. The Peak country in Derbyshire, between Chesterfield, Castleton and Sheffield, has been very productive, and possesses a number of mines; but the yield has fallen off greatly of late years, as is also the case in Denbighshire and Flintshire, where the mines are troubled with floods of water. Of the slatey rock ores, South Wales is the chief deposit, in the counties of Cardigan and Montgomery, where the neighbourhood of Aberystwith and Llanidloes are becoming very important lead-mining districts. The Isle of Man and Wicklow county in Ireland have some valuable mines in the granite, which are very rich in their silver ores, though the carboniferous lead ores are generally poor in this respect. There is a rather rich lead district in the Silurian hills of the Stiperstones, on the borders of Shropshire and Wales; and also at Wanlockhead and Leadhills in Lanarkshire, together with a small patch in the mountain limestone of the Mendip Hills, Somersetshire. The number of lead mines in Great Britain is 304, producing about 76,000 tons of ore. When it is smelted, the amount of actual lead obtained is about 57,000 tons, together with about 460,000 ounces of silver. But the production of lead has gradually been falling off, and we have to import a good deal, principally from Italy. Lead ore dressing is always carried on at the top of the mines, but the principal lead smelting works are at Alston, and near Newcastle in Northumberland, at Holywell and Flint in North Wales, and at Wanlockhead in Lanarkshire. These, then, are our principal under-ground riches, though we must not forget that we have mines of other kinds,