SPRINGS. SALT. 63 



it forms a communication with a permanent subterranean 

 sheet of water, affording plentiful supplies to the inhabitants 

 of upland districts, which are above the level of natural 

 springs. 



A farther benefit which man derives from the disposition 

 of the mineral ingredients of the secondary strata, results 

 from the extensive diffusion of muriate of soda, or common 

 salt, throughout certain portions of these strata, especially 

 those of the new red sandstone formation. Had not the 

 beneficient providence of the Creator laid up these stores of 

 salt within the bowels of the earth, the distance of inland 

 countries from the sea would have rendered this article of 

 prime and daily necessity, unattainable to a large proportion 

 of mankind : but, under the existing dispensation, the pre- 

 sence of mineral salt, in strata which are dispersed general- 

 ly over the interior of our continents and larger islands, is a 

 source of health, and daily enjoyment, to the inhabitants of 

 almost every region of the earth.* Muriate of soda is also 

 among the most abundant of the saline compounds formed 

 by subUmation in the craters of volcanos. 



With respect to the state of animal life, during the depo- 

 sition of the Secondary strata, although the petrified re- 

 mains of Zoophytes, Crustacea, Testacea, and Fishes, show 

 that the seas in which these strata were formed, like those 

 which gave birth to the Transition series, abounded with 

 creatures referable to the four existing divisions of the ani- 

 mal kingdom, still the condition of the globe seems not yet 

 to have been sufficiently advanced in tranquiUity, to admit 



* Although the most frequent position of rock salt, and of salt springs, 

 is in strata of the new red sandstone formation, which has consequentlv 

 been designated by some geologists as the saliferous system, yet it is not 

 exclusively confined to them, Tlie salt mines of Wieliezka and Sicily are 

 in tertiary formations ; those of Cardona in cretaceous ; some of those in 

 the Tyrol in the oolites ; and near Durham there are salt springs in the 

 coal formation. 



