The Origi7i of Salt. 241 



bers of the Intermediate departments, especially Una Atwood, 

 Willie Cresmer, Albert Reinhardt and Ernest Jenkins. 



Carrie Bates, Secretary. 



Dr. Asa Gray, the renowned botanist, was reported December 

 loth as very ill, and was not expected to live till morning. We 

 hope to hear better news. 



THE ORIGIN OF SALT. 



This world was once a haze of fluid light, as the poets and the 

 men of science agree in informing us. As soon as it began to 

 cool down a little, the heavier materials sank toward the center, 

 while the lighter, now represented by the ocean and the atmos- 

 phere, floated in a gaseous condition on the outside. But the 

 great envelope of vapor thus produced did not consist merely of 

 the constituents of the air and water; many other gases and vapors 

 mingled with them, as they still do to a far less extent in our ex- 

 isting atmosphere. By and by, as the cooling and condensing 

 process continued, the water settled down from the condition of 

 steam into one of a liquid at a dull red heat. As it condensed it 

 carried down with it a great many other substances, held in solu- 

 tion, whose component elements had previously existed in the 

 primitive gaseous atmosphere. Thus the early ocean which cov- 

 ered the whole earth was in all probability not only very salt, but 

 also very thick with other mineral matters close up to the point of 

 saturation. It was full of lime and raw flmts and sulphates and 

 many other miscellaneous bodies. Moreover, it was not only just 

 as salt as at the present day, but even a great deal Salter. For 

 from that time to this evaporation has been constantly going on 

 in certain shallow, isolated areas, laying down great beds of gyp- 

 sum and then of salt, which still remain in the solid condition, 

 while the water has happened in a slightly different way with the 

 lime and flint which have been separated from the water chiefly 

 by living animals, and afterwards deposited on the bottom of the 

 ocean in immense layeis, as limestone, chalk, sandstone and clay. 

 Thus it turns out that in the end all our sources of salt supply are 

 alike ultimately derived from the briny ocean. Whether we dig- 

 it out as solid rock salt from the open quarries of the Punjab, or 

 pumped up from brine wells sunk into the triassic rocks of Che- 

 shire, or evaporate it direct in the salt pans of England and the 

 shallow salines of the Mediterranean shore, it is still at bottom 

 essentially sea salt. However distant the connection may seem, 

 our salt is always in the last resort obtained from the material held 

 in solution in some ancient or modern sea. Even the saline springs 

 of Canada, and the northern states of America, where the wapita 

 love to congregate, and the noble hunter lurks in the thicket to 



