In a pass of the Styrian Alps, between the valleys of the Mur and the Enns, lies one of the most remarkable iron mines in the world, the famous Erzberg or iron-mountain, which rises to a height of 3,000 feet, and whose summit and sides are almost everywhere coated with a thick mantle of the richest ore. Authentic records show that it has been worked ever since the year 712; and probably the Romans derived a part of their Noric iron from this source, as the ore is not here concealed in the bowels of the earth, but crops out on the surface, near a mountain pass which was undoubtedly known to them. As at Nishne-Tagilsk, the ore thus conveniently situated is quarried from the mountain, and thus in course of time extensive excavations or grottoes have been formed all over its surface, affording a most interesting spectacle. The bottom of these iron-stone pits is irregularly strewn with large blocks of ore through which wind narrow footpaths. Roads lead from one pit to the other, and close by are situated the small huts in each of which ten or twenty of the miners sleep as long as the working season lasts, for their families generally live lower down in the deeper valleys. On the top of the mountain stands a colossal crucifix of iron, near which an annual thanksgiving feast is celebrated. Though the mines are easily worked, the conveyance of their produce to the smelting-ovens of Eisenerz and Vordernberg is a matter of much greater difficulty, and requires numerous tram-roads, galleries, and shafts, through which the ore is precipitated from a higher to a lower level. At the foot of the mountain they all unite in one main shaft, which leads into a gallery ornamented with a monumental gate. Thus the whole of the Erzberg is covered with various machines, pits, horizontal and vertical galleries, tunnels, and roads, and represents as it were a _mine turned inside out_, where all the operations which are elsewhere performed underground are, as at the Carclaze tin-mine in Cornwall, exposed to the open day. Here, instead of dirty and dangerous ladders, convenient footpaths, bordered with trees and illumined by the sun, lead from gallery to gallery and from pit to pit, and instead of being confined in dismal passages, the miner enjoys magnificent views of the grandest Alpine scenery. The annual produce of the Erzberg amounts to 25,000 tons of excellent iron, as the ore (sparry iron, carbonate of iron, sphærosiderite) is nearly as pure as the magnetic iron-stone of Russia, and affords natural steel with the greatest facility. The railroad now being built in Styria will no doubt greatly increase this production, which might be continued for many thousand years without exhausting the vast mineral wealth which Nature has here deposited.