102 On Muriate of Soda. 



expense and trouble. Stall-fed oxen require salt once at 

 least in two or three days in the state of Vermont. 



The usefulness, yea even the necessity of salt for domes- 

 tic animals is so great and so universally acknowledged, 

 that everv farmer living remote from the saline effluvia of 

 the ocean finds it to his interest to purchase a quota of salt 

 for each head of stock that he possetises, and to incur con- 

 siderable annual expense for that purpose. And this article 

 is found to be almost as much wanted by the brute ani- 

 of the plantation as by the human beings of the house- 

 hold. . , . 



The grecdincs"? of these domesticated creatures for salt is 

 such, that when it has been withheld from them a longer 

 time than usu.tI, they can smell it from the hand or pocket 

 of a person who enters a field, to a considerable distance: 

 they croud round him with such earnestness as sometimes 

 to put him in danger of being pushed and trampled down, 

 or of having his clothes torn off his back. They lick the 

 dust that is tinctured with the most trifling particles of salt, 

 and gnaw and devour clothes, leather, and every thing 

 whatever that contains the minutest portion of it. And in 

 case there should be no sea-salt, they will greedily regale 

 themselves with the saline renmanl of potash and soda ad- 

 hering to goods that have been soaked in lev, or washed 

 with soap; in this respect manifesting an appetite similar 

 to that of the human species, who, both in America and 

 Asia, employ vegetable ashes as a condiment for their food, 

 when they are unable to get a supply of common salt. — See 

 Medical JRcpository, vol. vi. p. 330, and Philosophical 

 Maga;^ine, number Ixv. p. 18. 



if it should be demanded what is the final cause of this 

 imconquerable desire for salt, it might be replied that, be- 

 side'^ stimulating the mouth and alimentary canal, salt evi- 

 dently acts as a corrector of putrefaction upon the food and 

 faeces therein contained, and by furnishing a supply of soda to 

 preserve the bile in an alkaline ai\d antiseptic condition. In 

 my theory of the operation of common sail in preserving 

 animal flesh (Med. Rcpos. vol. ii. p. 210), I have sup- 

 posed that both the meat and the salt may undergo a de- 

 composition. When this happens, the corrupting meat 

 sometimes forms septic acid. This product of putrefac- 

 tion decomposes the salt, in consequence of a strong attrac- 

 tion for its alkaline basis, soda, and forms a septite of soda; 

 while the disengaged muriatic acid combines with the beef, 

 mutton, or whatever it may be, and forms a muriate of 



meat. 



