29 
\ Assembly 
Others are of more recent origin, and present the appearance of deep 
and perfectly regular wells, or excavations. Dr. Benjamin DeWitt, in 
a Memoir on the Onondag-a Salt Springs, states, " that at a distance of 
half a mile from the Salt Point (Salina) there is a pit lately sunk into 
the earth; it is four or five feet wide, descends twenty feet perpendi- 
cularly, and then appears to take an oblique direction downwards." 
" This," he adds, " is supposed by some to have been caused by a va- 
cuity underneath, produced by the solution of a body of salt in the wa- 
ters which lead to the springs."* 
I was so fortunate as to have the opportunity of examining a cavity of 
a similar kind, formed during the latter part of the month of May, 1837. 
It is on the grounds of Major Burnet, a short distance from the court- 
house, about half way between the villages of Salina and Syracuse. The 
cavity, at the time when I visited it, was fifteen or sixteen feet deep, and 
about ten or twelve feet in diameter, and had a roundish or oval out- 
line. The sides of this pit or well were perfectly smooth, and it had 
the appearance of a work of art. At the depth of ten or twelve feet, 
there was a stratum of reddish indurated clay, which had been broken 
off and carried in an oblique direction downwards, thus agreeing very 
well with the description given of a similar cavity by Dr. DeWitt. 
Upon subjecting to analysis a portion of this clay, I found it to be com- 
posed, as already stated, of carbonates of lime and magnesia, alumina, 
silica and oxide of iron — together with minute portions of common salt 
and chloride of calcium. 
Although the formation of these cavities, or sink holes, in the imme- 
diate vicinity of the brine springs, seems to admit of a very easy ex- 
planation upon the supposition that beds of fossil salt exist at conside- 
rable depths below the surface, and that by the washing away of some 
blocks of it, a vacuity is produced, and the strata of earth, clay and 
rock thereupon subside, I was not prepared to receive it, until I found 
notices of similar occurrences near the beds of rock salt in Cheshiref and 
Worcestershire, in England. Dr. Hastings, in the account of the salt 
springs of Worcestershire, already quoted, states the following fact with 
regard to the discovery of rock salt at Stoke Prior. Without the least 
apparent indication of the existence of this mineral, it seems that one of 
those persons called brine smellers, pronounced that there was salt in 
that vicinity. 
* Transactions of the Society of Arts, &c. of the State of New- York, I. 268 (1801.) 
t See Holland's survey of Cheshire, page 20. 
