The first in the series of the more important mining products of the Ukraine is mercury. It is obtained from the cinnabar mines of Mikitivka, in the Donetz Plateau. Here, 842,000 q. of cinnabar were mined in 1905, yielding 320,000 kilograms of mercury. Outside the Ukraine, the Russian Empire has no mercury mines worthy of mention. Copper ore is found in the Donetz Plateau, in Kherson and Tauria, in the Bukowina and Marmarosh, yet the production is comparatively small. Much greater is the copper production of the Caucasus, where, in 1910, about 2,500,000 q. of copper ore (35% of the Russian production) and 81,000 q. of copper (31%) were gained. Much more important is the manganese production of the Ukraine. Manganese ores are gained chiefly from the oligocene strata of the Nikopol region (on the lower Dnieper), [277]and in Eastern Podolia. The production for the year 1907 amounted to 3,245,000 q., or 32% of the total Russian output and about one-sixth of the output of the world. But all the remaining metal resources of the Ukraine disappear, as it were, beside the enormous wealth of iron of the land. Iron ores are found in great quantities in very many places in the Ukraine; many deposits have not been sufficiently explored to make exploitation seem advisable, and many, for various reasons, are not being exploited. The iron production of the Ukraine is consequently limited to a few centers, but in these it is of very great importance. The most important center of iron mining is Krivi Rih (Government of Kherson) and vicinity. The annual production here (1903–1904) amounted to 26¼ million metric hundredweights. The entire supply of iron ore at Krivi Rih is estimated at 870 million metric hundredweights, but in the immediate vicinity there lie much larger untouched deposits. The iron content of the ores (red and brown iron ore) is 60–75%. Other iron ore deposits of the Ukraine are of much less significance. Only in the Donetz Plateau and in the vicinity of Kerch are iron ores still mined in considerable quantities. The iron ore deposits of the Caucasus, the brown iron ores and swamp-ores of Volhynia, of the western Kiev country and of the Polissye, are not exploited, and in in the Ukrainian Carpathians of the Bukowina and Northeastern Hungary, iron mining is dying out. The iron production of the Russian Ukraine in 1907 amounted to 39.9 million q., that is, 73% of the total Russian production. The figures for the years following are: 1908—40.3 million q. = 74%; 1909—39 million q. = 74%; 1910—43.4 million q. = 74%; 1911—51.1 million q. = 72%. These figures show clearly enough what a wealth of iron the Ukraine possesses, and what part the country plays as the chief producer of iron for Russia. [278]