on their steamed potatoes or on their other crib 
food, is peculiarly appropriate. A poor torn- 
down horse, if put into a salt-marsh, may, by 
means of the salt which he there receives with 
his food, be purged and cleared of every dis- 
order, and speedily become fat. The horses of 
many parts of America are daily fed each on 
from 4 to 5 gallons of oats, besides hay, and re- 
ceive each a good handful of salt about twice a- 
week; and they are excellent workers, and con- 
tinue in high condition, even when performing 
long journeys at the rate of 45 miles a-day. 
Some horses in whose manger a lump of rock salt 
has been regularly laid every spring and autumn, 
have eagerly licked it, and have, with little ex- 
ception, continued in good health during 14 
years. Horses about to be called out to extra- 
ordinary exertion have received a little salt by 
way of preparation for their work, and seem to 
have been sustained by it under their extreme 
fatigue in a similar way to the camels who re- 
ceive a little salt during the passage of the cara- 
vans across the deserts of the Hast. 
Salt has the same effects on the ass and on the 
mule as on the horse. Wild asses feed chiefly 
on the most saline and bitter plants of the desert, 
such as the salsolas, the atriplices, and the cheno- 
podiums; and they seem to recognise and relish 
saline vapours at a comparatively great distance 
from the sea or from lakes, and in consequence 
readily discover distant waters by the smell. 
The mules who work in the Real del Monte silver 
mines in Mexico have such a greed for salt that 
they constantly lick the ore, which consists of 
mercury and sulphuret of silver in amassment 
with salt and with iron pyrites; and, though 
they in consequence take in large impregnations 
of the metals, they suffer no inconvenience ; 
and, on opening them after death, considerable 
quantities of silver are sometimes found amassed 
in their stomach. 
Salt has been known from ancient times and 
in mutually far-distant countries to be highly 
beneficial to cattle. Pliny, in his Natural His- 
tory, tells us that cattle have an avidity for salt 
pasture, and that cows who graze on it give milk 
in larger quantity and of better cheese-making 
quality than cows fed on insaline lands. Dick- 
son, in his Husbandry of the Ancients, says that 
the Romans prepared the straw for cattle-food 
by steeping it for a considerable time in brine, 
and then drying it, and rolling it up in bundles. 
An American writer in the Museum Rusticum, 
about 85 years ago, said, “ We think salt in a 
manner absolutely necessary, and accordingly 
give it to every kind of cattle; and to this prac- 
tice of feeding with salt, it is generally ascribed 
that our cattle are so much more healthy than 
the same animals in England; certain it is that 
they are subject to much fewer diseases.” In 
some parts of Africa, large herds of cattle travel 
from great distances, at stated seasons, to enjoy 
the marine plants which grow on the coast and 
SALT. 
are saturated with sea-salt. The fattening pro- 
perty of our own salt marshes is well known to 
graziers and farmers. In Smith’s Wonders, it is 
stated that the water of the salt mines near 
Eperies, in Upper Hungary, affords a blackish 
salt, which is generally given to cattle. For 
many years, it has been the custom in Germany, 
and particularly in Wirtemberg, where a vast 
number of oxen are bred, to give doses of glauber 
salt to cattle. As long as common salt was more 
expensive than glauber salt, it was thought that 
the inhabitants of Wirtemberg used the latter 
through economy; but this supposition must 
have been erroneous, as they still continue to 
use glauber salt, although the discovery of salt 
springs has rendered the domestic salt exceed- 
ingly cheap. The reason they assign for this 
preference is, that it conduces, by its purgative 
qualities, to keep the cattle in good health, and 
that even when, from long habit, they become 
less liable to be acted on by it, it still promotes 
digestion, and brings the beasts into good con- 
dition more rapidly. Matthew Aphonin, a Rus- 
sian naturalist, remarks that “oxen fatten very 
quickly upon the sea-coasts where the arrow- 
grass, Triglochin maritimum, their favourite food, 
abounds ;” and if this be so, it is probably ascrib- 
able to the saline nature of the plant, and to the 
sea breezes containing particles of salt. In Upper 
Canada, the cattle have plenty of wild pasture to 
brouse on in the woods; but, once in a fortnight, 
they return, of their own accord, to the farms, 
to obtain a little salt; and when they have eaten 
it, mixed with their fodder, they repair again to 
the woods. D’Azara tells us that, in some 
parts of Paraguay, salt is not given to the herds 
of cattle ; but they are supplied with the barrero, 
a saline or nitrous earth, which they and other 
animals seek with avidity, and without which 
they fail and die in the course of four months. 
From the 27° of south latitude to the Malovine 
Islands, they have no need of the barrero, be- 
cause the water and pasture-grounds are suffi- 
ciently salt; but northward, beyond this lati- 
tude, it is necessary, and the plains which do 
not contain it, feed neither the ox, horse, ass, 
mule, goat, nor sheep. In India, salt is given to 
bullocks daily, to the amount of 2 or 3 ouncer, 
in their feed of pulse, or of a mixture of grain, 
vetches, and chaff; and so efficacious is it with this 
mixture of food as, in six or seven months, to 
render bullocks of 16 years of age, who have be- 
come superannuated from active service, as fit for 
the shambles, or as fine in the quality of their 
beef as the majority of oxen seen in the annual 
shows of Smithfield. A small quantity of salt in 
accompaniment with clover, turnip-tops, and 
other green and succulent food, tends to prevent 
hoove. 
Salt is sometimes very serviceable to fattening 
calves. When a sucking calf does not get enough 
of milk, and requires to be fed with oatmeal- 
gruel, he may sicken and die if the gruel be salt- 
