one Miscellanies. 215 
‘feet. At about thirty it gypsum has been struck in all the wells, and 
_ in the salt-rock well has continued down to the solid bed of. salt-rock, oc- 
- *casionally changing to slate and thin veins of blue soft clay. At about 
two hundred and thirty feet, they afrived at the first symptoms of salt, 
which from plaster, slate-rock and salt, gradually changed, the salt-rock 
assuming the predominant part. ‘ 
The writer remarks, “we have for thirty feet, continued through this 
substance, and now find the slate-rock gradually intermixing with it.” 
Several wells have been bored at different times, within short distances of 
each other. It is said, that from one of them, some years ago, salt bor- 
ings were extracted ; salt water was found at two hundred and twenty 
six feet deep. 
From a single well, sufficient salt water is now extracted in twenty four 
hours, to afford one thousand bushels of merchantable salt, which more 
than supplies the demand in that region of Virginia. 
The salt forwarded to us by Mr. Taylor, is highly crystalline in its _ 
structure, and except a-red color, (obviously derived from iron,*) and oc- 
casional fragments of rocks mixed with it, appears to be very pure. Its 
‘ae is decidedly and purely saline without bitterness; when pulverized, 
red color almost. disappears and it is tolerably white. Some small 
ri were perfectly white. Specimens of gypsum were enclosed in our 
box ; they are of a very decided character—are finely granular in struc- 
ture, and of a grayish white.’ We have no secount of the other rocks 
found with the salt, but.from tl E , that sand- 
stone and marly clays are among them. 
P.S. A-second letter from Rev. S. Taylor, dated May 31, vinta; on Sis 
authority of Mr. W. Findley, who is the proprietor of the well in which the 
salt is found, that in sinking the well, they penetrated earth and rock about 
fifty + sixty feet, when they came upon the plaster, through which they 
passed about one hundred and fifty or one hundred and seventy feet. 
They then struck upon the bed of salt, and penetrated it about fifty or 
sixty feet without reaching the salt water 5 they then abandon dig- 
ging, applied the auger, and bored a ten feet more, as he supposes, 
through the salt, but the mixture of salt er renders it uncertain. The 
roof then appears to be gypsum, but the floor is unknown. - 
24. Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. 
Nos. I and 2, for I eu April, and May, 1841.—This long established 
and useful institution hen commenced the publication of a bulletin in 
monthly parts, containing notices of all the important doings of the So- 
ciety, with alist of donations to the library, museum, &c. This plan was 
adopted by the American Philosophical Society, about two years since, in 
Se Me ie EO eee 
2. stance kL = ; olored by animalcules. 
* ft is now ascertamed 
