in Fluids. 353 



existence, but, as strata of salt mines frequently lie 

 higher than the mean level of the country, I was sur- 

 prised that lakes of salt water should not more frequently 

 be found ; and as these reflections occurred to me after 

 I had discovered what appeared to me to be an evi- 

 dent proof of the wisdom and goodness of the Creator 

 in making all lakes in cold countries fresh, I began to be 

 alarmed for the fatal consequences that might ensue, if, 

 by chance, the side of a lake should come into contact 

 with a mountain of salt, as I saw might easily happen. 



Shall I, or shall I not, attempt to give my reader 

 an idea of what I felt, when, meditating on the subject, 

 and almost beginning to repent of what many, no doubt, 

 have already condemned as the foolish dream of an en- 

 thusiastic imagination, I saw, all at once, that the most 

 effectual care had been taken to prevent the evils I ap- 

 prehended, that from the very constitution of things, 

 and the ordinary and uniform operation of the known 

 laws of Nature, the permanent existence of a lake, SALT 

 AT THE SURFACE, is absolutely impossible, even though it 

 should be surrounded on every side by mountains of 

 salt ? * 



Though the explosion of a volcano, an earthquake, or 

 any other great convulsion, by which the shores of a lake 

 might be brought into contact with a vast mine of salt, 

 might cause the whole mass of its water to be salt for a 

 time, yet the evil would soon effect its own remedy : 

 the falling in of the crust of earth and stones by which 

 mines of salt are everywhere found to be covered (and 

 without which they could not exist) would very soon 

 cover the naked salt, and the water at the surface of the 



* By the word Lake I mean, as is easy to perceive, a collection of water, in a high 

 inland situation, from which there is a constant efflux. 

 VOL. I. 23 



