Richmond dispatch. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1884-1903, 1885-10-10
The Origin Of Salt.
lCornhill.l

This world was once a haze Of fluid |
light, as the poets and the men Of SCI
ence agree in informing us. As soon
as it began to cool down a little the |
heavier materials naturally sank to-
ward the centre. while the lighter, now
represented by the ocean and the at
mosphere, fosted in gaseous condi-
ton on the outside. But the great
envelope OF vapor thus produced did
not consist merely Of the constituents
Of air and water; many other gases
and vapors mingled with them,
as they still do to a far less extent
in our existing atmosphere. BY and
by, as the cooling and condensing pro-
cess continued, the water settled down
from the condition Of steam into one
Of liquid at dull.red heat. AS it
condensed it carried down with it
great many other substances, held in
solution, whose component elements
had previously existed in the primitive
gaseous atmosphere. Thus the early
ocean which covered the whole earth
was in all probability not only very
salt, but also quite thick with other
mineral matters close up to the point
of saturation. 1t was fall OF lime and
raw flint and sulphates, and many other
miscellaneous bodies. Moreover, it
was not only just as salt as at the pre-
sent day, but even a great deal sslter.
For from that time to this evaporation
has constantly been going on in certain
shallow, isolated areas, laying down
great beds of gypsum and then Of salt,
which still remain in the solid condl-
ton, while the water has, of course,
been correspondingly purified. The
same thing has likewise happened in
slightly different way with the lime and
flint, which have been separated from
the water chiefly by living animals, and
afterward 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 ul-
timately derived from the briny ocean.
Whether we dig it out as solid rock-salt
from the open quarries of the Punjab,
or pump it up from brine-wells sunk
into the trlassic rocks of Cheshire, or
evaporate it direct in the salt-pans of
England and the shallow salines of the
Mediterranean shore, it is still at bottom
essentially sea-salt. However distant
the connection may seem, our salt Is
always in the last resort obtained from
the material held in solution ia some
ancient or modern sea. Even the saline
springs of Canada and the northern
| States Of America, where the wapitl
love to congregate, and the noble hunt
err turks in the thicket to murder them
unperceived, derive their sadness, as
an able Canadian geologist has shown,
from the thinly-scattered salts still re-
tanned 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 al
ways the briny; to modern science,
on the other hand, (which neither
of those worthless would probably have
appreciated at its own valuation,) the
briny is always the oceanic. The fos-
sill food which we find to-day on 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
vet even our men of science habitually
describe that ancient mineral as com
| mon salt.