The Manitowoc pilot. [volume] (Manitowoc, Wis.) 1859-1932, 1885-11-19
THE ORIGIN OF SALT.
All Our Sources OF supply Ultimately
Derived from the Briny Ocean.

The world was once haze of fluid
light, as the poets and the men of
science agree in informing us, As soon
as it began to cool down little the
heavier materials naturally sank to-
ward the centre, while the lighter,
now represented by the ocean and the
atmosphere, fioatcd in gaseous condi-
ton on tho outside. But the great en-
velope of vapor thus produced did not
consist merely of the constituents of
the air and water; many other gases
and vaporS mingled with them, as they
still. do to q far less extent in our pres
ent atmosphere. By and by, as the
cooling ami condensing process con-
tinued, the water settled down from
the condition of steam into ono of a
liquid at dull red heat. As it con-
densed it carried down with 1t a great
many other substances, held in solu-
tion. whose component elements had
previously existed in the primitive gas
eous atmosphere. Thus the early ocean
which covered the whole earth was in
all probability not only very salt, but
also very thick with other mineral mat
ters close up to the point of saturation.
1t was full of Lime and raw flint, and
SulphateS, and many other miScella-
neous bodies Moreover, it was not
only just as salt as at the present day,
but even q great deal salter. For from
that time to this evaporation has been
constantly going on in certain shallow.
Isolated areas, laying down great beds
OF gypsum and then of salt, which still
remain in the solid condition, while the
water has likewise happened in
slightly different way with the lime and
flint, which have been separated from
the water chiefly by living animals, and
afterwards deposited on the bottom Of
the ocean in immense layers, as lime
stone, chalk, sandstone and clay. Thus
it turns out that in the end all our
sources of salt supply are alike ulti-
mately derived from the briny ocean.
Whether we dig it out as solid rock
salt from the open quarries of the Pun
jab, or pnmp II up from the brine wells
sunk into the triassic rocks OF Ches.
shire, or evaporate it direct in the salt
pans of the Mediterranean shore, it is
often at bottom essentially sea salt.
However distant the connection may
seem our salt is always in the last re-
sort obtained from the material held in
solution in some ancient or modern
sea. Even the saline springs of Cana
ala and the northern States of America,
where the wapita love to congregate,
and the noble hunter turks in the
thcket to murder the unperceived, de-
rive their saltneSs, as an able Cana
dian geologist has shown, from the
thrlly-scattered salts still retained
among the sediments of that very
archaic sea whose precipitates form the
earliest known life-bearing rocks. To
the Homeric Greek, as to Mr.. Dick
Swiveller, the ocean was always brinv;
to modern science, on the other hand
(Which neither OF these worthless would
probably have appreciated at its own
yaluation), the briny is always the
oceanic. The fossil food when we
find to-day upon all our dinner-tables
dates back its origin primarily to the
first seas that ever covered the surface
OF our planet, and secondarily TO the
great rock deposits of the dried-up
triassic inland sea, And yet our men
OF science habitually describe that an
ciont mineral as common salt.-Corn-
htU Masasiae.