474 E. M. KINDLE SEPARATION OF SALT FROM SALINE WATER 



easily removed by wind-driven sands and carried inland to indefinite dis- 

 tances. 



In recent years the view that many salt lakes have derived most of 

 their salt from the sea through the agency of the wind has gained ground 

 over the older opinion that the salt of such lakes had been gathered from 

 their drainage basins as a result of land-locked drainage. The trend of 

 the former view is illustrated in Ackrad's- conclusion that the salt of the 

 Dead Sea has been carried b}^ the wind from the Mediterranean Sea. 



R. Angus Smith has shown that the amount of salt in rain-water varies 

 with the distance from the sea.^ In the salt desert region of India even 

 the dew which collects on the Faras trees is said to be distinctly saline.* 



Prof. J. B. Woodworth has caUed my attention to a map of the State 

 of Massachusetts^ which shows by "isochlorine lines" the normal chlorine 

 of ground waters from the seaboard inland, varying from 3.16 in 100,000 

 parts on Nantucket to .07 at the New York line. 



The photographs here sho^Ti (figures 1 and 2) support the newer views 

 regarding the origin of salt lakes to the extent of showing the marvelous 

 facility with which salt separates itself from saline solutions and forms 

 deposits which are most accessible to wind action. 



It may be pointed out here that the activity of the migratory tendency 

 which characterizes the behavior of salt in aqueous solutions is not con- 

 fined to subaerial conditions. The peculiar features in the behavior of 

 saline water which have been described are worthy of careful considera- 

 tion by the geologist, for because of them the opening of a fault-line or 

 joints to a bed of salt at any depth would afford a means of its escape or 

 migration upward. The same tendency which enables all of the salt in a 

 glass tube to remove itself from that tube by ascending the sides of a pine 

 stick, as already described, or to form a cap at the top of a glass jar would 

 cause it to migrate laterally or vertically through the rocks which possess 

 the proper porosity to admit of the movement of water which would aid 

 in such a transfer. We should therefore expect salt deposits to remain 

 in the beds where originally laid down only when these beds are sealed 

 by impervious clays or other beds, as in the Salina formation. It is quite 

 possible for the migratory propensity of salt in many instances to cause 

 its transposition to a part of the geological section remote from the hori- 

 zon of its original deposition. The great salt domes of the Louisiana 



2 Chemical News, January 8, 1904, p. 13. 



3 Air and rain, p. 263. 



* T. H. Holland and W. A. K. Christie : The origin of the salt deposits of Rajputana. 

 Rec. Geol. Surv. of India, vol. 38. 1909, p. 166. 



3 Twenty-second Ann. Rept. of the State Board of Health of Massachusetts. Public 

 Document No. 34, Boston, 1891. 



