Alpena weekly argus. [volume] (Alpena, Mich.) 1871-1893, 1888-02-29
The Origin of Salt.

ihio Noiiu Was OhCc u uaLe VI Hulu
light, as the poets and the men of
science agree in informing us. AS
soon as it began to cool down a little
the heavier materials naturally sank
toward the center, while the lighter
now represented by the ocean and
the atmosphere, foated in gaseous
condition on the outside. But the
great envelope of vaper thus produc.
ed did not consist merely of the con-
stituents 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 con-
den,ing process continued, the water
settled down from the condition of
steam into one of liquid at a dull
read heat. AS it condensed it carried
down with it a great many other SUBJ
stances, held in solution, whose COM
ponent elements had previously exist
ed in the primitive gaseous atmos.
phere. 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 satu-
ration. 1t was full Of lime and raw
flint, and sulphatss, and many other
bodies. Moreover, it
was not only just as salt as at the
present day, but even a great deal
salter. For from that time to this,
evaporation constantly been going on
in certain shallow isolated areas, w.
ing down great beds Of gypsum and
then of salt, which will remain in the
solid condition, while the water has,
of course, been correspondingly puri-
fled. The same thing has likewise
in slightly different way
with lime and flint, which have been
separated from the water chiefly by
living animals, and afterward depos-
tied on the bottom of the ocean in
immense layers as limestone, chalk,
sandstone and clay. Thus it turns
out that in the end all our sources of
salt supply are alike ultimately de-
rived from the briny ocean. Wheth-
er we dig it out as solid rock salt
from the open quarries of the Pun
jab or pump it up from brine wells
sunk into the triassic rock of Che
shire, 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 connec-
ton may seem, our salt is always in
the last resort obtained from the
material held in solution in some an
cient or modern sea. Even the saline
springs of Canada and the northern
States of America, where the wapiti
love to congregate, and the noble
hunter turks in the thicket to murder
then unperceived, derive their salt
ness, as an able Canadian geologist
has shown, from the thinly scattered
salts still retained among the sedi-
ments of that very archaic sea whose
precipitates form the earliest known
life bearing rock. To the Homeric
Greek, as to Mr.. Dick Swiveller, the
ocean was always the briny to mod
ern science, on the other hand (Which
neither of those worthless would pro-
badly have appreciated at its own
valuation), the briny is always ocean
ic. The fossil food which we find to-
day on our tables dates back its ORR
gin primarily to the first seas that
ever covered the surface of our planet
and secondarly to the great rock de-
posts of the dried up triass'c in
land sea. Aud yet even our men of
science habitually describe that an