ON PHOSPHATES.
BY P. E. BUCKE, OTTAWA.
Some enquiries having been made at the Winter meeting of the Fruit Growers’ Association, in February last, regarding phosphates, the following facts may not be without interest.
Deposits of the richest description of this ore are found on the River du Lievre, which flows into the Ottawa river, 18 miles below Ottawa city. Scientific analysis has proved beyond doubt that these beds of phosphates are decidedly the richest ever mined in any quarter of the globe, ranging, as they do, from 85 to 95 per cent. The rocks bearing this mineral are traced through five townships, and though the area is scarcely yet known to a certainty, owing to the country not having yet been cleared up, and the localities being covered with moss, leaves, trees, shrubs, and soil; it is not improbable that it extends over many miles of territory, besides penetrating to a considerable depth into the earth’s crust. In many places the deposits are high up in the hills, the country about the section in which the phosphates are found being of a very uneven and broken nature. Already a number of enterprising individuals are engaged in getting out large quantities for shipment this Spring, and though this industry has been greatly retarded by reason of the small quantity of snow that has fallen during the Winter, yet it is expected that some four thousand tons will be delivered on the banks of the Ottawa or on the navigable waters of the Lievre, ready for shipment in barges, either to New York city or to Montreal, where it will be reshipped to Britain, France, Germany, and Spain. The price realized per ton is about $15, which varies according to the assay, when deposited on the wharf. In Liverpool or New York it is worth, in its crude state, from $28 to $32 per ton; and when manufactured into superphosphate, by treatment with sulphuric acid, it brings $50 per ton on this continent. This manure is principally used, on this side of the Atlantic, in the southern States, where the climate is of a humid nature; further north, or in Canada, it is stated it cannot be used with success, as our atmosphere is not sufficiently moist, and it would therefore lay inactive in the soil; should this apprehension prove to be correct, it can never come largely into use here until some means of irrigation is devised to dissolve it, so that it may be absorbed by the tender rootlets of young and growing plants. This fertilizer is principally used in England for turnips, and is drilled in with the seed. When applied to this crop it produces the most wonderful effects, stimulating the young plants to a rapid growth, thereby overcoming the ravages of the fly so destructive in its early stages.
The great rival to the Canada phosphate beds are those of South Carolina, which were opened ten years ago. I find by the United States, government returns, that in 1870 the sum of six millions of dollars was then invested by capitalists in working them, and the products from these mines have been shipped to Europe in large quantities. These phosphates are not nearly so pure as those on the Ottawa, yielding only 40 per cent., and as ours become better known in the old world, they will be the more sought after.
The Canadian phosphates supplied to the States are principally used there to mix with the poorer class received from South Carolina, which are manufactured into superphosphate at Brooklyn; the sulphuric acid used for treating the ores being that which has already done service in the coal oil refineries of Ohio and Pennsylvania. The margin is so great between the phosphate and the superphosphate, the former being worth $15, and the latter $50 per ton, that the question of manufacturing an article ready for use ought to be seriously taken into consideration by some of our capitalists. The refuse sulphuric acid could no doubt be very cheaply had from the London and Hamilton oil refineries, and it would only be a question whether it would be better to convey the acid to the phosphate or the phosphate to the acid, as the latter is not a very easy thing to handle. Should it be found necessary to manufacture the acid, it is understood there is any quantity of material for the purpose in the eastern townships, both as regards copper pyrites and sulphur beds; and if our deposits of phosphates turn out anything like what present indications would lead one to expect, at no distant day large manufactories, both of the acid and of the superphosphates will be established, most probably near Montreal, that being the most central point for operations.
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