258 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



unsafe to base conclusions on the evidence of silence, another ancient 

 author quoted by Athenaeus says that in former times the Greeks 

 burned the sacrificial parts of animals without salt, and that the cus- 

 tom continued into later times in conformity with the ancient practise. 

 Here then we have Homer 's silence supplemented by positive testimony. 

 It is well known, moreover, that all peoples are more conservative in 

 religious usages than in any other. The adhibition of salt, the 

 mola salsa of the Eomans, seems not to have been borrowed from the 

 Greeks, as were so many of their religious ceremonies. Like the 

 Eomans with their salted meal, the Hebrews were careful not to omit 

 salt from their sacrifices, though the former may not regularly have 

 put it on the flesh of the slain victims. In Leviticus we read: "And 

 every oblation of thy meal offering thou shalt season with salt, neither 

 shalt thou suffer the salt of the covenant of thy God to be lacking 

 from thy meal offering : with all thine oblations thou shalt offer salt. ' ' 

 From this command it may be inferred that salt was a part of bloody 

 sacrifices as well as of those of the fruits of the earth. 



In Germany there are many place-names that contain the Keltic 

 root hal which seem in some way to be connected with sodium chloride. 

 The best known of these is the city of Halle on the river bearing the 

 Teutonic appellation, Saale. It is not easy to see how this double 

 designation originated and conjectures are feeble arguments. There 

 is no doubt, however, that Halle got its name from the salt springs 

 near it. In the same country there were anciently several rivers called 

 Sala on the banks of which salt works bearing the name Hall were 

 planted. Besides the Halle already mentioned there is Eeichenhall 

 in Bavaria, Hallein in Salzburg, Hall in Tyrol and in Swabia, as also 

 Halen in Brabant, and others. In Czech there are likewise a number 

 of words containing the radical hal that have some connection with 

 salt. This root is still distinctly preserved in the Welsh 'halen' salt. 

 In some of the Keltic- dialects, however, the initial h is represented by s. 



In England there are a number of inland towns to the names of 

 which the suffix wich, from the Norse wic, a bay, is appended. This 

 seeming absurdity is easily understood when we remember that a wych- 

 house or wickhouse and a bayhouse came to be regarded as synonymous 

 terms, and that wychhouses were erected where salt was prepared from 

 brine, though they might be far from a bay. In the same way a coarse 

 kind of salt came to be called baysalt from its similarity to the crude 

 article of primitive manufacture. The wics in Essex were probably 

 the first localities where salt works of the rude original type were 

 erected. According to Isaac Taylor, the Domesday Book gives the 

 names of three hundred and eighty-five places in Sussex alone where 

 salt was made. The number seems incredible and may be a misprint; 

 but the general fact is well established. 



