┌───────────────┬──────┬──────────┬──────┬──────────┐ │Countries │ Years│ Tons │ Years│ Tons │ ├───────────────┼──────┼──────────┼──────┼──────────┤ │Great Britain │ 1840│ 1,400,000│ 1865│ 4,527,000│ │France │ 1845│ 271,000│ 1864│ 1,213,000│ │Prussia │ 1835│ 32,800│ 1865│ 772,000│ │Belgium │ 1845│ 134,500│ 1864│ 450,000│ │Russia │ 1838│ 171,000│ 1865│ 278,000│ │Austria │ 1835│ 200,000│ 1865│ 259,000│ │Sweden │ 1835│ 97,500│ 1865│ 227,000│ │Spain │ 1850│ 26,000│ 1865│ 48,000│ │Italy │ 1838│ 20,000│ 1865│ 27,000│ └───────────────┴──────┴──────────┴──────┴──────────┘ France occupied the next rank to Great Britain in 1864; but since 1866 Prussia, besides the rapid development of the iron industry in Westphalia and the Rhenish provinces, has acquired new and valuable mines by the annexation of Hanover and Nassau. Her production had consequently risen to 1,000,000 tons in 1868, and probably the time is not far distant when she will have outstripped France. Nassau possesses inexhaustible supplies of specular iron ore of a remarkable purity, which not only feed the blast furnaces of Westphalia, but are also largely exported to England. Footnote 60: From the official reports of the International Jury of the Universal Exhibition of 1867 in Paris. In proportion to the smallness of her territory Belgium rivals Great Britain in the production of iron, supplied exclusively by the brown oxide (brown hematite), and surpasses the vast empire of the Czar.