New Ulm weekly review. [volume] (New Ulm, Minn.) 1878-1892, 1888-02-29
The Origin of Salt.
From the Cornhill Magazine.


This world was once 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 sank toward the cen
ter, with the lighter, now represented
by the ocean and the atmosphere.
foated In a, gaseous condition on the
out side. But the great envelope OF
vapor thus produced did not consist
merely of the constituents of the air
and water; many other gases and va
pors mingled with them, as they still
do to a far less extent in our existing at
mosphere. 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 a dull
red 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 atmosphere
Thus the early ocean which covered
5he whole earth was In all probability
| not only very salt, but also quite thick
with other mineral matters closeup to
the point of saturation. It was full
of lime and raw flint and sui
pilates and many other miscellaneous
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 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 a 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
limestone, chalk, sandstone and clay.
Thus it turns out that in the end all
our sources of salt supply are alike
ultimately derived from the briny
ocean. Whether we digit out as solid
| rock salt from the open quarries OF
the Punjab, or pumped 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
| 40 sum c0O DoOCOll CSSOl1ClCtl1y sea ScbiO.
| 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 Canada
and the northern states of America,
where the wapita love to congregate,
and the noble hunter turks in the
thicket to murder them unperceived,
| derive their saltness, as an able
Canadian geologist has shown, from
the thlnly scattered salts stillretained
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 the
briny; to modern science, on the other
hand, (which neither OF those worthless
would probably have appreciated at
It's own valuation the briny is always
the oceanic. The fossil food which We
find to-day on all our dinner tables
date back it's origin primarily to the
first seas that ever covered the sur
face Of our planet, and secondarily to
the great rock deposits of the dried-up
triassic inland sea. And yet even our
men of science habituaily described
that ancient mineral as common salt.