OF FOSSIL SALT AND GYPSUM. 
52 
about one-square mile, and be about three hundred feet in thick- 
■ ness, but they thin ofl' at the edges, having the form, not of beds, 
but of lenticular masses. The annual produce of this mine is about 
300,000 tons; the larger part of which is carried down the 
river Weaver, and shipped from Liverpool. Upwards of three 
millions of bushels were sent from England to the United States, 
in the year 1831, but the whole of this was not from North- 
wich. There are other beds or masses in the same county, 
where salt is manufactured by the evaporation of the brine. The 
new-red-sandstone also embraces beds of gypsum, large quanti¬ 
ties of which are raised for the supply of various arts and manu¬ 
factures in different parts of the formation. 
~3l. The same minerals (salt and gypsum) are found associated 
in other countries and regions of the globe, imbedded in a rock 
of similar composition and structure, and as was once supposed 
by geologists, of the same age with the new-red-sandstone of 
the English strata. Our limits will admit only of a notice of the 
more remarkable beds of fossil salt on the eastern continent, and 
of the brine springs of our own country. 
1. At Cardona, in the south-eastern part of Spain, is a small 
mountain composed of alternating layers of gypsum and salt. 
The area of its base is a little more than a square mile, and its 
height between three hundred and three hundred and fifty feet. 
It was at one time stated to be a primitive, then a transition for¬ 
mation, next referred to tlie new-red-sandstone, and is now said 
bv'Lyell, to be contemporaneous with the chalk. 
2. Salt springs abound in the department of Meurthe, in the 
eastern part of France. In the year 1819, the strata from which 
they rise, were bored into, as in England, with the view of find¬ 
ing coal. Coal w’as not found, but instead it, beds of salt and 
gypsum, extending through an area of two hundred and seventy 
square miles. Four different beds of salt have been met with, 
the third of which is forty-five feet in thickness. The depth to 
which the fourth descends has not been ascertained. Corres¬ 
ponding beds have been proved by boring on the opposite side 
of the Rhine, in Baden and Wirtemburg, but nothing is known 
respecting their number, extent, and thickness; the saturated 
brine being here employed, instead of the solid material of the 
beds in procuring salt. All these are in formations which are 
the equivalents of the new-red-sandstone, and which are also 
known to furnish gypsum and salt springs in France and Spain, 
as well as in other parts of Europe. 
3. The salt mines of VVieliczka, in Poland, have been long 
celebrated. They were discovered in 1251 and though they 
have now been wrought for nearly six hundred years, there are 
no indications that they are likely to be exhausted. The country 
about Wieliczka, like the rest of Poland, is covered by tertiary de¬ 
posits, beneath which, the saliferous strata of that country, as 
