No. 200.] 
23 
" As to the rule," says our author, " by which the said Cheshire brine 
smeller determined that there was salt at Stoke Prior, I know nothing; 
but he attached great importance to what he called brine slips. By 
brine slips it appears that he meant a sudden slipping of the red marl 
which sometimes occurs about Droitwich. It not very uncommonly 
happens in this district, that on a sudden, a chasm will be formed twenty 
or thirty feet long, and a foot wide, by the giving way of the ground. 
These chasms are of great depth, and it is supposed by many persons 
that they communicate with salt strata below. Whether this be true or 
not, it is certain that the Cheshire Salter assured his Worcestershire 
friends that he smelt the salt at these chasms, and hence inferred that 
the work of mining might be attempted with security. He probably 
drew his inference, not from the sense of smell, but from the appear- 
ance of the marl. The result has at any rate proved him right in his 
prognostication, for solid rock salt was here for the first time found in 
Worcestershire."* 
I take pleasure in stating that the views which I have been led to 
adopt concerning the origin of these brine springs, are supported by the 
observations of professor W. B. Rogers, who has recently examined 
the salt springs of Virginia. " At the salt works on the Holston," 
says he, " the wells are usually from 200 to 300 feet in depth, present- 
ing strata of limestone near the surface, sandstone or slate alternating 
with beds of gypsum several feet in thickness, next beneath, and finally 
a stratum of clay within which the salt water is procured. This clay 
is of a reddish aspect, and a very argillaceous texture, being in all pro- 
bability a softened shale, such as that of the brine springs and rock salt 
of Cheshire, in England. In fact, a marked analogy is presented in the 
structure of the salt region of the Holston and that of Cheshire. In 
the latter, beds of gypsum are found alternating with strata of indura- 
ted clays and sands, approaching to slates and sandstones; and carbo- 
nate of lime exists largely in the strata lying near the surface. In all 
these particulars the salt region of the Holston corresponds with it very 
closely. 
" The great value of the Cheshire region, however, results from the 
heavy beds of rock salt which it includes, and of the existence of such 
upon the Holston, though far from improbable, no positive testimony 
has as yet been obtained. 
* The occurrence in the vicinity of Sahna and Syracuse, of weak brine springs impregna- 
ted with sulphuretted hydrogen, is another point of resemblance between this region and that 
in Worcestershire, (England,) where fossil salt occurs, which is particularly worthy of notice. 
A description ef these springs will be fonnd in a subsequent part of this report. 
