On the Manufacture of Salt in India. 249 



The brine which is derived from springs, is not heated be- 

 yond 100 or 110, and the process of crystallization goes on 

 for eight or ten days.* From the expence of fuel in England, 

 it may be doubtful whether the Cheshire fishery salt can 

 ever be made to supersede the foreign salt made by solar 

 evaporation, even if it were found to answer equally well for 

 those purposes for which the latter is imported. 



At Lymington, in Hampshire, we are told by Dr. Henry, 

 that advantage is taken of the greater heat of the climate 

 to concentrate the sea-water by spontaneous evaporation to 

 about one-sixth its bulk before admitting it into the boilers. 

 The salt is not raked out of the boilers and drained in bas- 

 kets as in some places ; but the water is entirely evaporated, 

 and the whole mass of salt taken out at once every eight 

 hours, and placed in troughs with holes in the bottom, 

 through which the deliquescent parts drip into pits made 

 under ground, which receive the bittern or bitter liquor. 

 Under the troughs in which the salt is placed to drip, and 

 in a line with the holes through which the liquor passes, 

 stakes are placed, on which a part of the salt that would 

 otherwise have escaped crystallizes, and forms lumps of sixty 

 or eighty pounds weight, called salt cats.if This circum- 

 stance is particularly to be noticed here, because this cat 

 salt is exceedingly pure ; and we shall find in the description 

 of the native mode of making salt, that a similar deposit of 

 large-grained salt takes place from the mother liquor imme- 

 diately after it drips from the baskets. 



Dr. Henry is of opinion, that the preference given to salt 

 imported from the southern parts of Europe, to the large- 



* Dr. Thomson, who aided Dr. Henry's inquiries on this subject, 



informed him of a peculiar kind of large-grained salt, known as Sunday 



salt, on the western coast of Scotland. It is so called, in consequence of 



the fires being slackened from Saturday to Monday, which allows the 



crystals time to increase in size. 



f Henry in Philosophical Transactions, for 1810, p. 94. 



2k 



