25 1913 while the raw materials sold for only a few cents per pound and under present conditions of manufacture the price of domestic magnesium will probably retain a very high ratio to that of the crude materials. If the cost of producing magnesium be reduced to a low enough point, this metal may largely replace aluminum in the making of automobile and aeroplane parts and in the many other uses to which aluminum is put at present, with a reduction in weight and increase in strength of the finished article. PRICES. In 1913 crude Grecian magnesite sold at from $7 to $8 per ton in bulk f.o.b. New York, and crude California magnesite sold at about the same price at the mine or point of shipment. Grecian material, ‘“‘caustic”’ calcined, fine ground and packed in paper-lined barrels, sold at from $25 to $35 per ton in New York, and the California product prepared and packed in the same way fetched $30 to $35 in Los Angeles or San Francisco. The price of dead-burned, crushed, or fine-ground Austrian magnesite averaged $16.25 to $16.50 in New York and the same product from Norway $22.50 in San Francisco. In 1918 the California crude sold at an average “of $9 per ton at the mines, and that of Washington at a little over $7. This represents a drop in price of about $1 per ton from 1917. The freight ~ from California to the east was a little over $16 to the ton. Quebec mag- nesite sold at about $9 per ton crude, caustic calcined and dead-burned averaged $38 per ton, the dead-burned being much the higher. What prices will prevail by the time that the Cariboo deposits are being mined is a matter of speculation, but when European magnesite is again imported western magnesites and hydromagnesities will evidently be at a disadvan- tage in the principal magnesite markets of the eastern United States. HYDROMAGNESITE DEPOSITS EXAMINED. GENERAL CHARACTER. Numerous outcrops of white or cream-coloured earths occur at Kelly lake, Clinton, Meadow lake, and Watson lake, and occurrences of the same nature are found in the neighbourhood of 141 Mile House on the Cariboo road and on Riske creek, west of Fraser river. Analyses indicate that some of these deposits are mainly hydrous’ carbonates of magnesia approach- ing hydromagnesite in composition; others contain a large proportion of. . lime carbonate; and others carry gypsum in excess. All these varieties closely resemble one another in general, but in- places where they occur together the purer hydromagnesites can be distinguished from the earths high in lime. The purer hydrous magnesium carbonates which for convenience will be called hydromagnesites, although they seldom have the exact composition of that mineral, are fairly coherent, white to cream white aggregates made -up of extremely fine particles showing glistening faces witha beautiful - silky lustre in reflected light. Scattered through these may be a few, black particles of very small size. When highly magnified the material resolves into very fine, greenish blades about 0-002 millimetres wide and 0-01 to 0-012 millimetres long, of low birefringence and parallel extinction. From the results of analyses these are thought to belong to an isomorphous series of which magnesite, hydromagnesite (3MgCO; Mg(OH). + 3H:0), ~ and nesquehonite (MgCO; 3H:O) are members (Figure 4).