Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1885-12-31
The Origin OF Salt.

Although fresh ideas ON the salt ques-
ton are rarely found, the C0rnhR Maga.iae
says:
This world was once a 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 towards the center while
the lighter, now represented by the ocean
and the atmosphere, fiOated i'll a gaseous
condition 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
far less extent in our existing atmosphere.
By and by, as the cooling and condensing
process continued. the water settled down
from the condition of steam into one of a
liquid at dull red heat. As it condensed
it carried down with it u great many other
substances held in solution, whose COM
ponent 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 min
eral matters close up 10 the point of satura-
ton. 1t was full of lime and raw flint and
sulphateS and many other miscellaneous
bodies. Moreover, it was not only Just as
salt as the present day, but a great deal
salter; for from that time to this evapcra-
ton has constantly been going on ia GER
tain shallow isolated areas. laying down
great beds of gypsum, and then of salt,
which still remain the solid condition,
while the water has, of course, been cor
respondingly purified. The same thing
has likewise happened in a slightly differ
ent 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 limestone, chalk, sand
stone and clay. Thus it turns out that in
the end all our sources OF salt supply are
alike ultimately derived from the brjny
ocean. Whether we dig it out as solid rock
salt from the open quarrieS OF the Puniab,
or pump ii up from brine wells sunk into
the triassic 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
in some ancient or modern sea. Even the
saline springs of Canada and the Northern
States of America, where the wapiti love to
CO gregate, and the noble hunter turks in
the thicket to murder them unperceiyed
derive their sadness. as an able Canadian
geologist has shown, from the thinly seat
tered salts still retained among the sedi-
ment of that very archaic sea, whose pre-
cipitates form the earliest known life bear
ing rocks To the Homeric Greek, as to
Dick Swiveller, the ocean was always 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 fossil food which we find to-day on all
our dinner tables dates back its origin pri-
marily TO the first seas that ever covered
the surface of our planet. and secondarily
to ;he great rock deposits of the dried up
| triassic inland sea And vet even our men
of science habitually describe that ancient
| mineral as common salt.