Salt Water 



stick together in lumps, after being packed in 

 sacks. 



Great districts of rock-salt are found in many 

 places such as those in the Carpathian Moun- 

 tains, in the Swiss Alps, in Germany, and in 

 Great Britain. One huge mine in Galicia has 

 been worked for six hundred years ; and this 

 supply is said to reach through about five 

 hundred miles. From British works alone the 

 quantity carried away every year amounts to 

 a cubic mile of salt. 



But land-supplies grow pale and insignificant 

 before the quantities which float in the ocean. 

 It has been reckoned that, if the waters of the 

 whole ocean could be dried up, the amount 

 of salt left lying on the ocean-bed would be 

 something like four-and-a-half millions of cubic 

 miles. 



Such an enormous mass hardly conveys a clear 

 idea. Let us think of one single cubic mile of 

 sea-water, separated from the ocean, and see 

 how much it would contain. First, the whole of 

 that cubic mile of water has to be dried up ; 

 and then the materials left behind have to be 

 weighed. We should find about thirty-three 

 millions of tons of various kinds of substances, 

 the names of which need not be given. We 



13 



