FOSSIL FOOD 279 



The mineral constituents, however, differ considerahly in 

 their proportions from those found in true salt laken of 

 marine origin ; and the point at which the salt is thrown 

 down is still far from having been reached. Great Salt 

 Lake must simmer in the sun for many centuries yet 

 before the point arrives at which (as cooks say) it begins to 

 settle. 



That is the way in which deposits of salt are being now 

 produced on the world's surface, in preparation for that 

 man of the future who, as we learn from a duly constituted 

 authority, is to be hairless, toothless, web-footed, and far 

 too respectable ever to be funny. Man of the present 

 derives his existing salt-supply chiefly from beds of rock- 

 salt similarly laid down against his expected appearance 

 some hundred thousand a}ons or so ago. (An aon is a very 

 convenient geological unit indeed to reckon by ; as nobody 

 has any idea how long it is, they can't carp at you for a 

 matter of an teon or two one way or the other.) Rock-salt 

 is found in most parts of the world, in beds of very various 

 ages. The great Salt Eange of the Punjaub is probably 

 the earliest in date of all salt deposits ; it was laid down 

 at the bottom of some very ancient Asiatic Mediterranean, 

 whose last shrunken remnant covered the upper basin of 

 the Indus and its tributaries during the Silurian age. 

 Europe had then hardly begun to be ; and England was 

 probably still covered from end to end by the primaeval 

 ocean. From this very primitive salt deposit the greater 

 part of India and Central Asia is still supplied ; and the 

 Indian Government makes a pretty penny out of the dues 

 in the shape of the justly detested salt-tax — a tax especially 

 odious because it wrings the fraction of a farthing even 

 from those unhappy agricultural labourers who have never 

 tasted ghee with their rice. 



The thickness of the beds in each salt deposit of course 



