WATER SUPPLY IN THE INTERIOR OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 97 
Sea is liable to variations, parts of the bottom are from time to 
crystals of common salt and gypsum. Beds of similar saliferous 
and gypsiferous clays with bands of gypsum wi peer: the slopes 
for some height above the present surface af the water, and mark 
= deposits eet when the Dead Sea covered a larger area than it 
wdoes. Say ee impressions of drifted terrestrial plants, 
ite strata eisiesi no organic remains.” (Geikie, Text-book of 
the rivers by which the silt is being carried ms oe clays 
large rivers reaches the Caspian, the waters of that lake or sea are 
not so salt as those of the Mediterranean, or even as those of the 
ocean ; but in the parts most remote from the mouth of the great 
rivers crystals of salt and gypsum are being deposited with the 
d i n 
plains of New South Wales that it would be impossible to come to . 
any other oe than that both formations had been produced 
under like conditio 
sidstable variation in the beds as we pass downwards, but I think 
there can be no doubt that the saliferous clays and sands with 
which they are interstratified, as well as the beds and nodules of 
gypsum, are of salt-lake formation, yor that they are now, and have 
been for a long period, undergoing a process of washing out, by 
_ which the salts deposited from the bitter waters are being gradually 
dissolved out of the soil and carried away to sea, partly through 
the rivers and partly by underground drainage. Of course 
