SALT, 
441 
extremely beautiful ; but did not cast that luminous 
splendour which some writers compare to the lustre 
of precious stones. 
“ The salt is called ziebna , or green salt, though 
the colour is iron gray, and when pounded appears 
like our brown salt. The quality improves in pro- 
portion to the depth. Towards the sides and sur- 
face, it is mixed with earthy or stony particles ; 
lower it is said to be pure, and to require no pro- 
cess before it is used. The finest of this gray salt, 
however, is of a weak quality when compared with 
our common sea-salt ; it is therefore undoubtedly 
by no means pure, but blended with extraneous 
particles, though it serves for common purposes. 
Being almost as hard as stone, the miners hew it 
with pick-axes and hatchets, by a tedious operation, 
into large blocks, many of which weigh six or seven 
hundred pounds. These masses are raised by a 
windlass ; but the smaller pieces are conveyed up by 
horses along a winding gallery, which reaches to 
the surface of the earth. Beside the gray species, 
the miners sometimes discover small cubes of white 
salt, as transparent as crystal, but not in any con- 
siderable quantity : they find occasionally pieces of 
coal and petrified wood buried in the salt.” 
About five leagues to the south-west of Cracow 
are the salt-mines of Bochnia, of the same depth, 
and almost as famous as those of Wielitska, but the 
salt which they yield is not so pure. 
At Soowar in Hungary there are also considerable 
piiues, of which Dr. Bruckman has left us the fol- 
