TOL. IV.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 3QQ 



when the wlch-houses had only begun to work, so that the pit was but little 

 drawn. I filled up the bottle with the same brine, and it weighed just three 

 drachms more. This brine being boiled away without any addition or clarifica- 

 tion, made five ounces and two drachms of salt. Five days after, when the pit 

 had been drawn all that while for the working of the wich-houses, viz. March 

 13, the same bottle filled to the quart mark aforesaid with brine then taken up, 

 weighed, beside the bottle, two pound four ounces and one drachm : the same 

 time the bottle, filled as in the former experiment, weighed just two pounds and 

 a half, which is three drachms more than the quart mark before ; which boiled 

 into salt made six ounces six drachms and two scruples, exceeding the former 

 quantity of salt by one ounce four drachms and two scruples, though the brine 

 exceeded the former in weight but four drachms. By this trial also I confuted 

 a tradition of the briners, that the brine is strongest at spring-tides; for 

 March 8, aforesaid, was only one day past the full, and then the brine was 

 weaker than it was the 13th day, when it was six days past the full. So that I 

 conclude, there could be no other reason than that the much drawing makes 

 way for the salt-springs to come the quicker, and allows the less time for the 

 admission of fresh springs. 



6. What is the manner of their work ? or what time of boiling the salt- 

 water ? Whether they use any peculiar thing to make it granulate, and if so, 

 what that is ? — Their manner of working is this : They have formerly boiled 

 their brine in six leaden pans with wood-fire ; upon which account they all 

 claim their interest in the pit by the name of so many six leads walling ; by 

 which they each know their proportion ; but in the memory of many alive they 

 changed their six leads into four iron-pans, something better than a yard square, 

 and about six inches deep, still fitting the content of these to that of the six 

 leads: and of late many have changed the four iron-pans into two greater; and 

 some wall but in one: But still the rulers gauge it to their old proportions. 



They use for their fuel pit-coals, brought out of Staffordshire. These pans 

 are set upon iron-bars, bricked in very close. They first fill their pans with 

 brine out of the pit : which comes to them in several wooden gutters : then 

 they put into their pans amongst the brine a certain mixture, made of about 20 

 gallons of brine, and two quarts of calves, cows, and chiefly sheep's blood. Of 

 this mixture they put about two quarts into a pan that holds about 36o quarts 

 of brine ; this bloody brine at the first boiling of the pan, brings up a scum 

 which they are careful to skim off; they continue their fire as quick as they can 

 till half the brine be wasted, and this they call boiling upon the fresh. But 

 when it is half boiled away, they fill their pans again with new brine out of the 

 ship, (so they call a great cistern by their pan sides, into which their brine runs 



