No. 108.] 57 



The Bonnaire salt is very heavy, weighing from 80 to 90 pounds 

 to the bushel. 



The quantity of salt imported into the port of New-York in 1840 

 and 1841, and the first quarter of 1842, was as follows: 



In 1840, 1,600,5-/3 



1841, 1,522,333 



1842, first quarter, 198,545 



The quantity of Salt made at the Onondaga salines in the State 

 of New- York, which belong to the government or people of this 

 State, during ten years from 1832, to 1841, both years inclusive, was 

 as follows: 



Inl832, 1,652,985 Inl837, 2,161,287 



1833, 1,838,646 1838, 2,575,032 



1834, 1,943,252 1839, 2,864,718 



1835, 2,209,867 1840, 2,622,305 



1836, 1,912,858 1841, 3,340,769 



These bushels are also calculated at 56 pounds each. 



The State of New-York now collect a duty of six cents per fifty- 

 six pounds for all the salt made at the Onondaga salines, which duty 

 was formerly appropriated to the payment of the interest on the 

 Erie canal debt, but now it goes into the General Fund. 



Of the salt manufactured at these salines in 1841, two hundred 

 and twenty thousand bushels were coarse salt made by solar evapo- 

 ration; the residue was fine salt made by evaporating in iron kettles, 

 by heat of fires supplied entirely with wood as fuel. 



The number of kettles used for the manufacture of fine salt at 

 Onondaga salines in 1841, was six thousand seven hundred and forty- 

 eight, containing in all, four hundred and ninety thousand and eight 

 gallons. 



The number of superficial feet of surface occupied by the vats for 

 solar evaporation, were one million four hundred and ninety-eight 

 thousand, two hundred and fifty-three. 



In the latter estimate is the steam works of Mr. J. W. Hale, 

 which cover 5,175 superficial feet, from which was made 13,553 

 bushels of coarse salt. 



Tiie ground covered by the salt works is near six hundred acres. 



It will be seen that the quantity of salt made at the Onondaga sa- 

 lines in 1840 and 1841, was about double that imported into the port 

 of New-York during the same years. 



The brine in the wells at Syracuse is of 78 degrees of strength; 

 100 degrees being the point of saturation; about 30 gallons of the 

 water make a bushel of salt. At the Saltville wells in Washington 

 county, Virginia, the salt water from the wells, when sunk within 

 less than fifty-feet of strata of salt rock of 150 feet in thickness, 

 was about of the same strength as the water of the Onondaga wells. 



The wells at Syracuse are about 270 feet in depth, and yield an 

 inexhaustible supply of water. These wells terminate in a bed of 



[Senate No. 108. j 8 



