C. A. Goessmann on the Chemistry of Common Salt. 85 
purest on record.* At the present time there is but little rock 
salt, as such, used in the United States. Natural solutions 
of rock salt furnish us with the brines of Saltville in North 
Western Virginia, of Goderich, Canada West, and, as I believe, 
of Onondaga, N. Y. 
Brines.—Brines are either natural or artificial ; that is, peach 
e 
extent and the nature of the saline mass from which they ori- 
ginate, while in the case of artificial brines, we are familiar at 
least to some extent, with the nature of the sources from which 
are exposed in passing to the surface ; an intercepting stratum 
often modifying materially their original composition.t More- 
over brines from the same salt deposit frequently differ widely 
e impurities of brines are those which are found in rock 
salt, but in many instances they contain also the car es of 
P* See ‘ of th ican Bureau of Mines, On the rock 
y statement in a report of the American | 
salt deposit of Petit Anse, dees New York, 1867; and also Dr. E. W. Hilgard’s 
Pag per in Proceedings of American A for the Advancement of Science, 
ug., 1868, 
‘Aga my contribution to the Chemistry of Mineral waters, ete. Syracuse, N. Y., 
Feb., 1866, also this Jour., 1866. ; : : : 
€ my contribution to the Chemistry of Brines, this Jour., July, 1867. 
Ibid., p. 80. 
