Nickel Deposits In The Urals

THE axis of the middle portion of the Ural mountains is made up chiefly of highly compressed igneous and sedimentary schists, considered of Devonian age by the Russian geologists, with large areas of serpentine (peridotite originally) gabbro, etc., intrusive in the schist series. In addition there are large areas of probably older granitic and gneissic .rocks. The nickel deposits referred to in this paper are found in the Devonian schists and their associated igneous rocks. The gabbro-peridotite intrusions probably took place in late Devonian or early Permian time, inasmuch as the Permian and Carboniferous beds lie at gentle angles on the Devonian series on the west slope of the Urals. Perhaps the first attempt to work a nickel deposit in the Urals was made about 1866 in the Revdinsk district, which is situated southwest of Ekaterinburg. I was informed by a Russian that a wet method of extracting the nickel was tried but was not a commercial success. This deposit has been described by Müller,1 Foullon,2 and Karpinski.3 Beck4 gives an abstract of these papers.