Japan.
—The tin-producing localities in Japan are near Kagoshima, Satsuma, on Kyushu Island; about 50 miles north of Kobe in Tajima province; and near Nayegi, Mino Province, near the center of the main island. Placer deposits near Nayegi have yielded some tin, seemingly derived from pegmatite dikes in granite. The Akinobe mine, in Tajima Province, was developed as a copper mine, but about 1912 tin and tungsten minerals were found in the ore. The veins are in slates and quartzites intruded by diorites. It is said that in 1917 about 40 tons of mixed tin-tungsten ores was produced daily. A small smelter at Ikuno handles the tin concentrates and produces about 250 tons of tin a year. The Susuijama mine, in Satsuma, produces tin from veins, in shales and sandstones, that also carry lead and zinc. Apparently the output is smelted and used locally.
Spain.
—In the provinces of Salamanca, Zamora, Orense, Pontevedra, and Coruña, northwest Spain, there are tin deposits. Lode deposits are found near the contact of granite intrusive into schists and gneisses, and placer deposits have been worked since ancient times. In 1913 about 6,700 tons of ore is said to have been produced, but since then the output has been around 100 tons a year.
Portugal.
—In Portugal, just south of the Spanish border, tin lodes in granite and slates have been found and placer deposits worked in the gravels adjacent to the lodes. The yearly output of these deposits is around 300 tons. It is reported that American capital is interested in some of the Portuguese tin and tungsten deposits.
United States.
—In the United States the domestic output is only nominal, being equivalent to 60 to 100 tons of tin a year. The productive deposits, placers worked by dredges, are in the York district of Seward Peninsula, Alaska. They occur near the contact of granite intrusive into limestones, in peculiar rocks of contact metamorphic origin.
Cassiterite has been mined from gravels derived from pegmatite dikes intrusive in pre-Cambrian rocks of the Black Hills near Tinton and Hill City, South Dakota, and various attempts have been made to mine the lode deposits. These deposits are of more scientific interest than commercial importance. A little stream tin has also been mined on the North Carolina-South Carolina boundary near King’s Mountain, the cassiterite being an original constituent of pegmatite dikes intrusive into pre-Cambrian schists. At Irish Creek, Rockbridge County, Virginia, there are known stanniferous veins in coarse granites. In the Franklin Mountains 14 miles north of El Paso, Texas, quartz veins in granite carrying cassiterite were worked at one time but have not been productive of late. In the Temescal Mountains, Riverside County, California, small quartz veins carrying cassiterite are found in acid granitic rocks that are intrusive into metamorphosed sediments. Considerable work was done in this locality in the years 1880 to 1890, but the irregularity of the deposits and their low tin content do not hold much promise for future production.
Prior to the war the United States, although the largest consumer of tin in the world, produced practically no tin ore, and imported only metallic tin, having no smelters for treating tin ore. Since 1916 smelters have been erected by the American Smelting & Refining Co., and the Williams Harvey Corporation, their estimated capacity being 18,000 tons of tin a year. Presumably these smelters must rely largely on Bolivian concentrates.