Mr. A. B. Northcote on the Brine-springs of Worcestershire. 27 

 /3= -02191, 

 E = l -29226 (the pressure reckoned in atmospheres), 



logp = 7-96295+ [1-6593576] log -f 1- K'r??ffl 1 #l \ j 



the pressure being expressed in millimetres of mercury, and the 

 temperature in Centigrade degrees, the absolute zero being sup- 

 posed to be 274° Cent, below the temperature of melting ice; 

 the quantities in square brackets throughout being the logarithms 

 of tbe numbers whose places they occupy. But although this 

 expression represents all Begnault's observations very well, it 

 deviates in places more than Mr. Bankine's formula. 



These expressions appear to have nothing in common with 

 those given by Mr. Waterston in the Philosophical Transactions, 

 part 1, 1852. 



IV. On the Brine-springs of Worcestershire. By A. Beauchamp 

 Northcote, Senior Assistant in the Royal College of Chemistry*. 



THE deposits of rock-salt which occur in the earth's crust, 

 and the brine-springs which at various places rise to its 

 surface, appear to be confined to no particular series of strata, 

 but to be distributed somewhat indiscriminately. Thus, the in- 

 exhaustible mines of Wielitzka in Gallicia, the deposits at the 

 base of the Carpathian mountains, as well as those in many 

 other places in central Europe, are found in the Tertiary : in 

 some parts of Germany, again, salt is obtained from strata equi- 

 valent to our New Bed Sandstone; in the Austrian Alps, an 

 impure deposit mixed with clay and gypsum occurs in oolitic 

 limestone ; whilst in many countries, and even in England, salt- 

 springs burst out of the carboniferous and older rocks f. 



The great English deposits, however, exist in the upper mem- 

 bers of the New Bed Sandstone, in the red and green marls of 

 that system ; which has occasioned the application of the term 

 " saliferous " to the whole series of rocks of which it is composed ; 

 a term which Sir B. Murchison, in his • Siluria/ shows to be 

 incorrect, inasmuch as the middle and upper members of that 

 group are destitute both of rock-salt and saline waters. These 

 Bait-producing strata of the New Bed Sandstone lie both in 

 Cheshire and Worcestershire in a basin of Lias : at Northwich 

 in Cheshire, masses of rock-salt exist, 60 feet in thickness, 1400 

 yards in breadth, and a mile and a half long; and from a bed 

 still lower, salt has already been removed to a depth of 110 feet J : 



* Communicated by the Author. 



+■ Munhison's Silurian System, vol. i. p. 31. 



X Geological Transactions, Old Series, vol. i. p. 46. 



