156 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
could not be estimated. It is also to be observed that since, 
for convenience of carriage, tbe sample of this water operated 
on was reduced by evaporation to one-fourth of its original bulk 
before being brought to this country for analysis, it is probable 
that some alkaline sesquicarbonates may have been originally 
present. 
The incrustations which at certain periods of the year accu- 
mulate to the extent of many hundreds of tons on the shores 
of this lake, mainly consist of carbonates of sodium, in which 
the proportion of sesquicarbonate is somewhat variable ; in 
some specimens examined monocarbonates were alone present. 
Besides carbonates of sodium, these deposits contain 3 per cent, 
of chloride of sodium, and about 5 per cent, of sulphate of 
sodium, together with traces of silica. 
It was proposed some years since to erect works on the eastern 
shore of Owen’s Lake, for the purpose of refining this deposit, 
for the manufacture of merchantable carbonate of sodium ; but 
whether this idea was ever carried out, I am not aware. The- 
only serious obstacles to the success of such an enterprise would 
appear to arise from scarcity of fuel, and the great distance of 
the lake from a shipping port. 
As this lake continuously receives the waters of a consider- 
able and constantly flowing river, while it has no apparent 
outlet, it follows that it must act the part of a huge evaporat- 
ing basin, in which the salts introduced by the not apparently 
saline water of Owen’s Biver become concentrated to an 
alkaline brine. The rocks on either side of the valley through 
which the river flows are, to a very large extent, composed of 
granites, lavas, and basalts, from the decomposition of the 
felspars in which the alkaline salts of the lake have doubtless 
been derived. The very small proportion of potassium salts 
present in these waters is remarkable, for although from the 
circumstance of the felspars of the district being to a large* 
extent triclinic, sodium might be expected largely to predom- 
inate, still so great a disproportion in the respective amounts 
of the two alkalies could scarcely have been anticipated. This 
circumstance may perhaps, to some extent, be accounted for 
by supposing the potassium salts to have been largely assimi- 
lated by plants during the percolation of the waters containing 
them through vegetable soil, while the salts of sodium, not 
having been thus arrested, have passed into the river, and 
thence into the lake. 
Owen’s, like Mono Lake, was at one time much more exten- 
sive than it is at present ; this is evident from the occurrence 
of a series of parallel terraces, plainly traceable on each side 
of the valley. In addition to these lakes, numerous alkaline 
lagunes and boiling springs are met with throughout this region* 
