Native metal brass, bronze, pewter, German silver, osmiridium, electrum, white gold, and silver-mercury and gold-mercury amalgam. Only gold, silver, copper and the platinum metals occur in nature in large amounts. Over geological time scales, very few metals can resist natural weathering processes like oxidation, which is why generally only the less reactive metals such as gold and platinum are found as native metals. The others usually occur as isolated pockets where a natural chemical process reduces a common compound or ore of the metal, leaving the pure metal behind as small flakes or inclusions. Non-metallic elements occurring in the native state include
Ore Mountains out Germany-wide in the 1950s the Ore Mountains formed major unit group 42: Even after the reclassification of natural regions by the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation in 1994 the Ore Mountains, region "D16", remained a major unit group with almost unchanged boundaries. However, at the beginning of the 21st century, the working group "Naturhaushalt und Gebietscharakter" of the Saxon Academy of Sciences ("Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften") in Leipzig merged the Ore Mountains with the major unit group of Vogtland to the west and the major landscape units of Saxon Switzerland, Lusatian Highlands and Zittau Mountains to the east into