Br. Carl Ochsenhis — On Metalliferous Deposits. 315 



Trona is met with in large quantities, for instance, in Hungaiy, 

 Egypt, Fez, India, etc. In face of these facts, the hypothesis that 

 soda is the result of an interchange of the components of carbonate 

 of lime and chloride of sodium is quite untenable. It cannot possibly 

 be the result of such an interchange ; for where do more favourable 

 circumstances exist to produce Trona, etc., as in Utah and in the 

 Sahara ? There the mother liquor salts are found in the closest con- 

 tact with limestone-formations under the most favourable climatic 

 conditions, but in neither place is carbonate of soda to be found, 

 although most diligent search has been made for it. 



In proximity to the cai'bonates of sodium are found also those of 

 potassium and magnesium, and these, combining with animal detritus, 

 formed the nitrate of potash in the plains of Hungary, and the 

 nitrates of potash and magnesia in India. The predominating 

 presence of saline substances in these salts leaves no doubt but that 

 they belong to the category of mother liquor salts, which were 

 formed in rock-salt layers of the Carpathians, the Himalaya, etc. 

 The influence of mother liquor sufficiently accounts for many other 

 phenomena : such for example as the origin of the materials found 

 in salt springs and salt lakes. These do not originate, as has been 

 wrongly supposed, directly from waters permeating rock-salt layers 

 of prior formation, and which supposition has already been refuted 

 by von Dechen, but a rock-salt bed was in all cases the main 

 product, and the salt materials of mineral springs and salt lakes, the 

 secondary product of the same process. This sufficiently explains 

 the great distance which is sometimes observed between rock-salt 

 layers and the salt springs, the materials of which originally formed 

 in the same locality afterwards flowed away. The mother liquors 

 on their course sometimes part with some of their constituents, for 

 instance, borates ; and the separation of chlorides and sulphates can 

 be readily observed in salt-swamps in the Argentine Eepublic, and 

 in the west of the United States, etc., and similar separations are the 

 cause of the variety of contents of salt springs. The exhalations of 

 boracic acid in Tuscany, as well as the appearance of the borates in 

 California, Tibet, etc., and even the saline substances thrown up by 

 mud-volcanos, are all dependent upon the presence of mother liquor 

 salts. Solutions of these salts transform limestone into dolomite ; 

 and serpentine must probably also be looked upon as the product 

 of the transformation of various kinds of rocks under the influence of 

 mother liquor- (magnesian-) salts. Sulphur layers formed by hydro- 

 chemic action also owe their origin to the co-action of mother liquor 

 salts. Petroleum is formed when a stream of downcoming mother 

 liquor suddenly destroys all flora and fauna contained in an oceanic 

 bay. The accumulated cadaverous remains become thus covered 

 with an impermeable sediment of silt, clay, etc., furnishing then the 

 material for the liquid carbon-hydrogen compounds ; these sometimes 

 becoming free, impregnated other strata.^ It is even possible that 

 overflows of mother liquor salts were the cause, in some cases, of 

 the sudden extinction of vegetable life in forests, thus forming the 

 materials for coal-fields ; for the presence of certain marine salts 

 1 Ochsenius, Petroleum-BMung, Natur, No. 29, 1882, Halle. 



