Memoir on the Mountain of Rock Salt at Car- 

 dona, in Spain. By M. P. Louis Cordis Ji. 



(Annales des Mines for 1817.) 



*Exiract. 



THE description of the rock salt mountain of Cardona, 

 should equally interest natural philosophers and mineralo- 

 gists. The perfectly insular state of this mountain, its great 

 mass, its peculiar forms, the actual position of the beds of 

 pure muriate of soda, of which it is almost exclusively com- 

 posed, are, without doubt, well worthy of attention ; but 

 the most remarkable circumstance apparently is, that such 

 a mountain, exposed since its formation, to the inclemency 

 of the weather, should have resisted it to this time, and 

 should not have sensibly diminished in size from the earliest 

 records. Its existence does not agree, it must be confessed, 

 with the common hypotheses, which suppose that high moun- 

 tains, and in general all the inequalities on the surface of 

 the earth, are subject to a rapid decrease. This mountain 

 is moreover as much celebrated in a picturesque point of 

 view, as it is little known in a scientific respect. It has 

 always been regarded as one of the most singular curiosities 

 of Spain ; nevertheless it has been visited but by few miner- 

 alogists, and the best notice that we as yet have of it, is that 



• This memoir, read to the Societe Philomathique of Paris, March 2, 

 1S16, is printed in the Journal de Physique, vol. 82, p. 343 to 358. 



