OF COMMON SALT. 



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formed, one after the other, at long intervals, the lowest first, 

 the highest last, and the others at intervening periods of time, 

 according to their position. If we examine the characters 

 stamped upon them, the certainty of their having been formed 

 at successive epochs, becomes absolute, for we find the lowest 

 stamped with the fossil remains of the beginnings of life, and 

 those only, the others with higher and yet higher organisms 

 added as we ascend, until we reach the highest or most recent, in 

 which, and in which only, together with many of the preceding, 

 the remains of man are found. Geologists assign a date to 

 the earliest of these records that takes us back in imagination 

 many hundred thousand years, and students of geology, as a 

 rule, willingly admit the accuracy of the assumption ; in fact, 

 the more willingly, the more they know about it. Here let 

 me interpolate, for the benefit of those who dislike on religious 

 grounds such wholesale inroads on time, that Hugh Miller 

 has forged from the consideration of these facts, one of the 

 most powerful arguments in favor of the truth of the Mosaic 

 record — see his " Testimony of the Bocks." 



These geological tablets are composed of various materials, 

 from the flags and slates of Silurian times, to the sand and 

 mud of yesterday's inundation. Many of these materials 

 are repeated over and over again, showing that the same 

 natural forces have been at work with the same substances 

 throughout the whole record. Bock salt is one of the rocks 

 most often repeated. It can hardly be considered a tablet 

 itself, but it is interleaved in the record, and its position in 

 point of time is clearly discernible. The Wieliczka mine 

 of rock salt in Poland, the largest known, is, as far as one 

 can judge — for its limits have not been reached yet — included 

 in Tertiary rocks, and therefore of comparatively recent 

 origin. Proceeding downwards in the earth's crust, or 

 further back in point of time, we come to the Trans-Indus or 

 Kohat salt formation, which is the oldest rock in the district, 



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