14 



of the continental ones, though in no case fully saturated. 

 A casual remark made in the letter of Adam Martindale, in 

 which he describes the discovery of rock salt in Cheshire 

 in 1670, viz. : "a rock of natural salt, from which issues 

 a vigorous sharp brine, beyond any of the springs made 

 use of in our salt works," shows that the natural springs 

 were not fully saturated. This is borne out by a recent 

 analysis of springs at Nantwich, none of which are fully 

 saturated. It would be easy to give a list of scores of 

 springs in Germany varying from 1 per cent upwards, 

 the bulk being 7 to 12 per cent.* Now, as the strength 

 of a brine spring indicates the amount of action upon the 

 salt bed from which it derives its saline matter, and this 

 too-ether with the quantity of water discharged by it, the 

 amount of salt abstracted, we have as it were certain 

 standards to measure the natural action of water upon salt 

 beds. As but few salt springs are fully saturated, so few 

 run very copiously. It may be taken as an axiom that the 

 more copious the spring is, the less salt is there in it. The 

 strongest springs do not always reach the surface or do but 

 gently ooze over it. The old Northwlch spring is described 

 early in the 17th century in Camden's Britannia as " a most 

 plentiful and deepe brine pitte." Again, Camden, speaking 

 of Middlewich and Northwich, says, " Brine or salt water 

 is drawn out of pittes." At Nantwich, Dr. Jackson, in 1688, 

 says, "In two places within our township the springs break 

 up so in the meadows as to fret away not only the grass 

 but part of the earth, which lies like a breach, at least half 

 a foot or more lower than the turf of the meadows and hath 

 a salt liquor oozing as it were out of the mud but very 

 gently." Dr. Brownrigg, in 1748, says in his Treatise on 

 "The Art of Making Common Salt," p. 95, "The salt springs 



* Quenstedt, in " Klar und Walir," p. 24-0, says " However vawch boasted 

 of the springs of North Germany may be, they have not saturated brine, 

 only a single one on the Liineberg Heath, in Hanover, is nearly saturated." 



