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Show II TIE PHOSPHATE ! LAioiElTiili!1 i Rate of Production Soon Would j ! Exhaust the Supply of j Material. : i The western phosphate lands recently withdrawn from entry by the secretary of the Interior In accordance with the president's pres-ident's ordor compriso portions of Morgan. Mor-gan. Rich and Cache counties In Utah; portions of Bear Lake. Bannock. Bingham and Fremont counties In Idaho; and nearly near-ly all of Uinta county In Wyoninlg in all about 7500 square miles of land more or i less underlain by phosphate rock and constituting the greatest known phosphate deposit of the world. Phosphoric acid Is an essential constituent constit-uent of productive soil. Work at agricultural agri-cultural experiment stations In Wisconsin. Ohio and Illinois has shown thnt In fifty-four fifty-four years the cultivated soils of those I states have been depleted of one-third of their original content of phosphoric acid, or at nn annua rate of about 20 pounds per acre. Evun if the loss hus been only one-half this amount It would require 6.000.000 tons of phosphate rock annually to offset this depletion In the -100.000.000 acres of cultivated lands In tho United States without allowance for Increase In thp urea cultivated or In the agricultural yield. There wero 2.205.000 tons of phosphate rock produced in the United States In 1907. and of this amount 900.000 tons, or about 40 per cent, was exported. The phosphate rock In South Carolina la nearly exhausted, tho Florida deposits have reached their maximum production, and although the output of the Tennessee deposits Is growing. tliese deposits, If tho Increase In tho rate e( production shown during the last decade continues, will last onlv about eleven years. There Is somo phosphate in Arkansas, Ar-kansas, but It Is of low grade. At tho present rate of mining the known available availa-ble supply of high-grade phosphate rock In the United States -will last only fifty-four fifty-four years, and If tile Increase in production pro-duction shown during the last decade continues con-tinues the supply will bo exhausted In twenty-livo years. It is therefore evident that the largo deposits of the public-land states must be depended on to replenish tho fertility of the farms of the United States, and the only available method of preventing the acquisition of these phos-phato phos-phato deposits by foreign companies for shipment abroad and of Insuring their uso on our own lands Is apparently to retain re-tain tho title in the government and lease the lands under provisions that will pre-vont pre-vont exportation. The list of lands to be withdrawn was furnished, by the United States geological survey ns a result of preliminary examinations examin-ations made In the field. Further work will bo done by the survev as soon ns practicable, for the purpose of making a careful classification of the lands and restoring re-storing to agricultural entry euch portions por-tions as may contain no phosphates. It is pointed out by the survey that the situation of this western field Is most favorable. fa-vorable. Tho smelters at Butte and Anaconda Ana-conda give off gases, chiefly sulphurous, which are very Injurious to vegetation. These gases can be utilized to great advantage ad-vantage by converting them into sulphuric -i acid for the manufacture of superphosphate superphos-phate fertiliser, thus transforming a sub-stance sub-stance that Is injurious to -egetatlon into i one that is beneficial. ! |