T. S. Hunt on Salts from Sea-water. 361 
loth, Harebell; 17th, Judas tree; 21st, Tree peony, var. papa- 
veracea; 23d, Crab apple and Quince; 24th, Black Haw; 25th, 
_ 12th, Fragrant peony; 18th, Strawbe ripe; 14th, Syringa 
 Philad., the Paprant varius was killed by the winter; 18th, 
_ Catawba grape. July 10th, Catalpa in bloom, Red raspberry 
; 14th, Wheat harvest begins, late by two weeks; 2st, 
Blackberry ripe. 
Marietta, Ohio, January 5th, 1858. 
Arr. XXXI—On the Extraction of Salis from Sea-water; by 
T. Srerry Hunt, of the Geological Commission of Canada.* 
THE manufacture of salt from the waters of the ocean has 
from an early period been an important branch of industry for 
the south of Europe. Without reverting to high antiquity, we 
may cite the salines of Venice, to which that republic owed the 
| ©Mmencement of its greatness and its wealth. The lagoons 
Which surrounded that city were enclosed and set apart for the 
breeding of fish and for the manufacture of salt. Making a mo- 
hopoly of this staple of life, the policy of Venice was to obtain 
Possession of all those salines which’ could compete with her, 
and we find the Venetians destroying such as they could not 
make use of, and exacting from the neighboring princes, treaties 
'o the effect that they would not re-establish the suppressed sa- 
lines, t was only two or three centuries later that this power- 
fal tepublic ordered, in the interest of her commerce, the sup- 
Pression of the salines of her own dJagoons, and: augmented the 
cree of those of Istria and of the Grecian Islands, which 
; Marseilles to re-establish the salines of Venice, which are now 
— "C8 more organized on a vast scale. 
Ted Extracted b Progress of the Geological Survey 
: the author from the Report of Progress og : 
4 fi ada for 1853-56, pp. 404411, Shere forms part of a report on the Indus- 
a See tibition at Paris in 1855. 
OND SERIES, Vor. XXV, No, 75.—MAY, 1858. 
46 
