Salt flat

“ I have known people who accustom themselves to the use of salt baths, and who talk very glibly of the luxury of sea-bathing, who yet are in complete ignorance of the virtues of salt as a condiment and as a preserver of health, and who try to prove that salt so used is obnoxious, and consequently to be avoided. These salt baths are popular, not because they are beneficial, but by reason of their comparative novelty; and accordingly, many who would not think of using salt with their food, plunge headlong into the sea or into a salt-water bath, with all the vigour possible. ”

“ Let it be clearly understood that all commercial salt is produced either from the sea or from rock-salt. Sea-water is evaporated to precipitate its salt either by the heat of the sun or by artificial heat. Rock-salt is mined and refined for market purposes, and it is resolved into brine from which the salt is extracted by solar heat or the process of boiling, but whether the salines are obtained from salt lakes or from natural brine springs, or are prepared by flooding salt deposits with water and pumping it out in the form of fully saturated brine, rock-salt is the foundation for them all. ”

“ A very serious difficulty presents itself in the great thickness of many strata of salt; which, if regarded as the solid residuum of sea-water, must have necessarily required a proportionate volume of water, unless the seas of those distant periods contained a larger amount of saline ingredients than they do at the present time: an inference for which there are no reasonable grounds.
Wherever there are deposits of the chloride of sodium, they are almost always accompanied with layers and intercalations of gypsum ”

“ In each gallon of river or rain water dissolve about six ounces of sea-salt, either by stirring it or suspending it in the water in a linen or muslin bag. It dissolves as readily in cold as in hot water. Sea-salt is produced by evaporation of sea-water. Common salt is sometimes supplied in place of it; but the genuine sea-salt, manufactured by well-known firms, which can be procured of any grocer or of most chemists, is specially prepared to enable persons to have a salt-water bath at home. ”

“ The water of landlocked seas like the gulf of Mexico or the Mediterranean sea contains more salt than that of the open ocean, and it is also found that the water of the bottom of such seas is salter than that upon the surface.—Salt crystallizes in colorless, transparent, anhydrous crystals, belonging to the isometric system, and has a very perfect cubic cleavage, which generally displays itself even in the great masses of rock salt, parts of which however are frequently massive and granular, and rarely fibrous or columnar. ”

“ If brine is allowed to evaporate slowly, the molecules of the salt arrange themselves, as the water leaves them, in beautifully regular cubical crystals. You may see them form easily enough if you watch a drop of brine gradually dry up under a microscope. The salt crystals contain nothing but salt. If they are heated till they become red-hot they pass into the fluid state; and when still further heated, the fluid salt becomes a vapour or gas and, as such, flies off into the air, or volatilizes. ”

“ When, therefore, common salt becomes damp by mere exposure to the air, it is to be inferred that it contains impurities which, as they possess a very bitter taste, would, if mixed with butter, confer a bad flavor upon it. The impurities of salt may be almost completely removed by placing about a stone weight of it in any convenient vessel, pouring over it a quart of boiling water, and mixing thoroughly the fluid and solid. ”

“ Even at the highest temperatures, heat cannot effect the decomposition of common salt. At a red heat, pure sodic chloride melts and becomes liquid, and if cooled again, a solid crystalline mass is formed. Ordinary salt fuses at a lower temperature and volatilizes when heated in an open vessel. ”

“ More than half the ten ounces of salts consist of it alone, which will make you understand better than before, what I explained with reference to the stomach; that is, why we put salt in our food. The porter above is quite up to his business when he asks everyone who enters to produce his little bit of salt. It is an attention which the blood appreciates very highly, although table-salt is of no great use to him in his building operations ”

“ Particles of chloride of sodium in volcanic ejections were no explanation of the formation of huge deposits of rock-salt, and since it was realized that salt in large quantity can only be obtained from salt water, and that it cannot be got naturally from the sea, it became evident that what man does in isolating tracts of sea-water to produce salt by solar evaporation, must have been practised by nature on an extensive scale in all ages. ”

“ Common salt is deposited in large quantities in different parts of the earth. Since salt is readily soluble in water, many streams pick up large quantities of it, and as all water courses ultimately find their way to the ocean, the latter becomes a repository for salt with which the earth-water is laden. ”

“ Considering that the salt rivers are themselves salted by passing through salt regions, or being fed by saline springs, all of which derive their saltness from deposits laid down long ago by evaporation from earlier seas or lake basins, this explanation savours somewhat of circularity. It amounts in effect to saying that the sea is salt because of the large amount of saline matter which it holds in solution. Cheese is also a caseous preparation of milk; the duties of an archdeacon are to perform archidiaconal functions; and opium puts one to sleep because it possesses a soporific virtue. ”

“ The whole Orb of the Earth would at length grow dry, and perish, which nevertheless by the perpetual access of salt, never intermitteth, but is encreased and sustained.
There is no Stone which can want Salt, which argueth Salt to be its beginning and nourishment, and that those Mountains, in which is a great quantity of a saline nutriment, do grow and encrease thereby, as receiving it in a plentiful manner from the nearest sea. ”

“ There seems no reason to doubt the truth of the man's tale; he no doubt got, as he says, the rather uncommon salt you prescribed from the wholesale chemist's, and it has probably remained on his shelf for twenty years, or perhaps longer. Here what we call chance and coincidence begin to work; during all these years the salt in the bottle was exposed to certain recurring variations of temperature, variations probably ranging from 40° to 80°. ”

“ SALT. Geological Position of Rock Salt—Mines of Northwich—Their immense Excavations—Droitwich and Stoke—Wieliczka—Berchtesgaden and Reichenhall—Admirable Machinery—Stassfurt—Processes employed in the Manufacture of Salt—Origin of Rock-salt Deposits.
Common salt is so necessary to man, and of such vast importance to the manufacturer and agriculturist, that the processes by which it is obtained are justly reckoned among the chief branches of industry.
In many of the warmer countries of the globe it is procured simply by the evaporation of sea-water in shallow lagoons ”

“ Is it not a blessing to know that nature has munificently provided a means whereby these distressing evils may be checked and definitely eradicated by a daily use of such an enemy to, and destroyer of, disease as the chloride of sodium, universally known as common salt? ”

“ Science is at fault in this, as she is in many other subjects which have perplexed and interested from time to time those who study and seek to unravel the various obscure and complicated phenomena of nature.
No satisfactory or elucidatory theory has, as yet, been advanced to account for the occurrence of the formation of salt. Some geologists have maintained that it was deposited from the ocean, but in what way they do not explain; indeed, it is difficult to suppose how it could have been so, for salt, or rather sea water, holds in solution many ingredients which are not present in this rock. ”

“ The deposits, which are found at a considerable height above sea-level, are of great but undefined magnitude, as the lowest strata has been bored through for a thickness of 72 feet, without penetrating the formation. The rock salt here was acknowledged to be purer than any previously encountered in Cheshire, and the brine derived therefrom, containing 26·100 chloride sodium by weight, yields on evaporation an exceptionally high class of white salt. ”

“ But when the saturated brine is pumped up and its place is taken with a new supply of water which collects its tribute from the salt strata, and that water, in its turn, is raised, to be replaced by more, and when it is known that each 100 tons of water that traverses the salt-bed to the pumps carries away with it 25 tons of solid earth, the work of destruction that is continually going on is explained. ”

“ We have salt, or the chloride of sodium, presented to us in six different conditions, viz.: sea or salt water, salt or brine springs, salt lakes, salt mines, mountain or fossil or rock salt, and salt marshes. The characteristics of salt are just the same fundamentally, whether we extract it by evaporation from sea-water or salt lakes; whether we obtain it from salt-springs; whether we dig it out of the earth or by the excavation of salt mountains ”

“ These recent scientific investigations have proved that the proportion of salt held in solution by sea-water determines its blue or green appearance, and also its specific gravity; consequently, when the water is blue, we may conclude that it holds a much greater proportion of salt; when it is green, it is indicative that there is a decrease. ”

“ Our Country-people draw the Salt every other day, and they draw out of those Beds, mark't hhh, every time more than an hundred pound weight of Salt.
In the hottest part of the Summer there is Salt made even during Night.
The Instruments used to draw the Salt, have many small holes, to let the Water pass, and to retain nothing but the Salt.
According to the Quality of the Earth or Ground of the Marish, the Salt is made more or less White. The Reddish earth maketh the Salt more Gray ”

“ SALTS Of all salts found in the body, the most abundant and valuable is sodium chloride (NaCl) , common salt; it exists in all tissues, secretions, and fluids of the body, with the exception of enamel of the teeth. The amount found in food is not always sufficient; therefore salt is used as a condiment. It assists digestion, inasmuch as it furnishes chlorine for hydrochloric acid found in gastric juice. ”

“ Wherein consist the Distinctions of those sorts of Salt, which are called Catts of Salt, and Loaves of Salt? An. As White Salt is that, deliver'd in my former discourse and Gray Salt the sweepings of such Salt, as is constantly shed and scatter'd about on the floore without taking much of the Dirt, which occasions its grayness (which sells not at half the rate of the White Salt, and is only bought up by the poorer sort of People, and serves them in salting Bacon, course Cheef, &c.) So Catts of Salt are only made of the worst of Salt, when yet wettish from the Panns ”

“ The greatest quantities of this salt are to be found in those earths which have been drenched with urine, or other animal excrements. Now as the rubbish of old houses in great cities is in this class, it comes to pass that when the Salt-petre workers evaporate a nitrous lixivium drawn from that rubbish, as soon as the evaporation is brought to a certain pitch, a great many little crystals of sea-salt form in the liquor, and fall to the bottom of the vessel. ”

“ The only assumption required to enable us to explain a great thickness of salt in such as area is, the continuance, for an indefinite period, of a subsiding movement, the country preserving all the time a general approach to horizontality. Pure salt could only be formed in the central parts of basins, where no sand could be drifted by the wind, or sediment be brought by currents. Should the sinking of the ground be accelerated, so as to let in the sea freely, and deepen the water, a temporary suspension of the precipitation of salt would be the only result. ”

“ First, that the Earth of the Marish be proper. Secondly, that the Salt be made with good store of water. Thirdly, That the salt-man, who draws it, be dextrous. In this Isle of Rhe there are, that draw very dark Salt, and others, that draw it as white as Snow; and so it is in Xaintonge. Chiefly care is to be taken, that the Earth at the bottome of the Beds mingle not with the salt. The Salt, we use at our Tables, is perfectly white; which is thence, that 4. or 5. hours before the Salt is to be drawn, we draw the Creme, or that salt which is form'd on the top of the water. ”

“ The large grained, flaky salt was made with an evaporation conducted at the heat of 130 or 140 degrees, and the pan was filled once in every forty-eight hours; while in the case of fishery salt, the brine was brought to a heat of from 100 to 110 degrees of Fahrenheit, and five or six days were required to evaporate the water of solution. In the course of these several processes, various additions were often made to the brine, with the view of promoting the separation of any earthy mixture, or the more ready crystallization of the salt. ”

“ Physiology has been a boon to humanity and an inexhaustible field of research to the scientific.
In a chemical point of view there is no more important mineral constituent in the human body than the chloride of sodium, for it occurs nearly in every part of the system, both solid and fluid, in close and intimate relation with the organic compounds, and it materially influences their chemical and physical properties; for instance, the albumen partly owes its solubility to the presence of salt, the quantity of which causes the differences which it presents as regards its coagulation ”