FIRST YEARS IN AMERICA 23 



resources and the quality of the brines, especially at 

 Goderich. 



In 1862 he published his first paper on salines. This, 

 the first of a series of reports to the State Superintend- 

 ent of the Onondaga Salt Springs on the chemical com- 

 position of the brines, was followed by reports on the 

 brines of Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Vir- 

 ginia, Nebraska, Kansas, Kentucky, and Tennessee, 

 on the rock-salt deposit of Petite Anse Island, on the 

 salt resources of Goderich, Canada West, and by other 

 contributions to the chemistry of mineral springs and 

 natural brines. The report on the rock-salt deposit of 

 Petite Anse Island republished at Washington in 

 the Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge was 

 pronounced by Professor Hilgard, then state geologist 

 of Mississippi, able and exhaustive, and confirmed 

 that author's previous conjectures 'that the overlying 

 strata were the equivalents of the formation described 

 by him as the "Orange Sand" of Mississippi.' 



The improvements introduced by Goessmann while 

 superintendent at Onondaga, in the manufacture of 

 pure dairy and table salt, were many and important. 

 He devised an ingenious method for freeing pure 

 sodium chloride, in the manufacture of salt, from the 

 chlorides of calcium and magnesium. Previously it had 

 been impossible effectually to remove those noxious 

 and deleterious ingredients, and the product was bitter 

 and unfit for either table or dairy use. He ladled the 

 crude salt-crystals from the brines on to inclined drip- 

 boards, and then washed them with a saturated wa-ter 

 solution of pure salt (sodium chloride). Such a solu- 



