The United States has sufficient supplies of fluorspar to meet all its own demands for this material. Small amounts, however, are imported for use in eastern furnaces because the material can be brought over from England very cheaply. The domestic fluorspar is suitable for practically all purposes for which fluorspar is used except for lenses in optical instruments. For this use very small quantities of material imported from Japan have been used, but recently fluorspar of a grade suitable for optical purposes has been found in Illinois, Kentucky, New Hampshire, and other states. For fluxing purposes domestic fluorspar is superior to the foreign product. GEOLOGIC FEATURES Fluorspar is the trade name for the mineral fluorite, which is composed of calcium fluoride. This is a common mineral in veins and replacements which carry ores of zinc, lead, silver, gold, copper, and tin. It is formed under a variety of conditions, but is always ascribed to solutions coming from nearby igneous rocks. The large fluorspar deposits of Illinois and Kentucky contain fluorite with calcite, barite, and metallic sulphides, in wide veins filling fissures in limestones and sandstones and replacing the fissure walls. Into these sediments there are intruded certain peridotite dikes. The fluorite and associated minerals were probably deposited by hot solutions bringing the material from some large underlying igneous mass of which the dikes are off-shoots. In the western United States many metalliferous deposits carry large amounts of fluorite, which is treated as a gangue or waste mineral, but which could be profitably extracted if there were local markets. In England, fluorite is obtained in this manner as a by-product from lead and zinc mines. SILICA ECONOMIC FEATURES Silicon and its oxide, silica, find important applications in the manufacture of iron and steel. Silicon, like manganese, is an important constituent of many steels, the alloy ferrosilicon being added to deoxidize and purify the metal and thus to increase its tensile strength. Like titanium, it is added chiefly for its curative effect rather than as a useful ingredient. On an average 4 pounds of 50 to 55 per cent ferrosilicon are used in the United States for each ton of steel produced. A higher grade of ferrosilicon (80 to 85 per cent) is used for certain special steels, and during the war considerable quantities were used in making hydrogen gas for balloons. Lower grades (10 to 15 per cent silicon) are practically a high silicon pig iron. Silica has an important use in the form of silica brick or "ganister" for lining furnaces and converters in which acid slags are formed. For this purpose siliceous rocks, chiefly quartzites and sandstones, are ground up, mixed with lime as a binder, and fused and pressed into bricks and shapes. For the most satisfactory results the rock should contain 96 per cent or more of silica, and very little of the alkali materials, which increase the fusibility.