The Golden State Scientist. 



7 



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 atmosphere, floated 

 in a gaseous condition on the out- 

 side. But the great envelope of 

 vapor thus produced did not con- 

 sist 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 existing atmosphere. 

 By and by, as the cooling and con- 

 densing process continued, the 

 water settled down from the con- 

 dition 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 so- 

 lution, whose component elements 

 had previously existed in the prim- 

 itive gaseous atmosphere. Thus 

 the early ocean which covered 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 flints 

 and sulphates and many other mis- 

 cellaneous 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, isolat- 

 ed areas, laying down great beds 

 of gypsum 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 an- 



imals, and afterwards deposited on 

 the bottom of the ocean in im- 

 mense layers, 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 

 Cheshire, or evaporate it direct in 

 the salt pans of England and the 

 shallow salines of the Mediterran- 

 ean shore, it is still at bottom es- 

 sentially sea salt. However dis- 

 tant the connection may seem, our 

 salt is always in the last resort ob- 

 tained 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 murder them 

 unperceived, derive their saltness, 

 as an able Canadian geologist has 

 shown, from the thinly scattered 

 salts still retained among the sedi- 

 ment of that very archaic sea whose 

 precipitates form the earliest known 

 life-bearing rocks. To the Hom- 

 eric Greek, as to Mr. Dick Swivel- 

 ler, the ocean was always the briny; 

 to modern science, on the other 

 hand, (which neither of those 

 worthies would probably have ap- 

 preciated at its own valuation,) the 

 briny is always the oceanic. The 

 fossil food which we find to-day on 

 all our dinner tables date back its 

 origin primarily to the first seas 

 that ever covered the surface of our 

 planet, and secondarily to the great 

 rock deposits of the dried up trias- 

 sic inland sea. And yet even our 

 men of science habitually described 

 that ancient mineral as common 

 salt. — Cornhill Magazine. 



