Salt water

“ Almost everyone is acquainted with the saltness while many bathers have noticed the superior buoyancy of salt water as compared with the fresh water of our rivers and lakes. The dissolved salts contained in sea water give it a greater density than that of pure water; and, since all floating bodies displace their own weight of the liquid in which they float, it is clear that they will not sink so far in the denser water of the sea as they would in fresh water. ”

“ For all this, in that pure, clear water, there is a continual process of production,—not only from the soil at the bottom of the sea, but the salt-water itself contains the germs of material substances, that sustain life, or become, themselves, living things, by what appears, to our ignorant eyes, spontaneous production. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The amount of SALT in the ocean is a circumstance which geologists have not, I think, sufficiently considered. This salt, if precipitated, would, it is believed, yield a solid range of mountains equal to that of the entire Himalaya. Now, mighty rivers run into the sea, as those of La Plata, Amazons, Mississippi, St. Lawrence, Orinoko, and many others; but none of these rivers are salt; they are enormous bodies of fresh water. How, then, does the ocean maintain everywhere its saline character unimpaired? ”

“ Conclusive reasons are that no water fowl or fish can live in an ocean of salt water. Strictly salt waters do not furnish any food; but only in bodies fed by streams of fresh waters, as in bays, inlets and mouths of rivers, and adjacent to the coast line of continents or islands where fresh water from springs and rainfalls contribute to produce growth and substances suitable for food. ”

“ Such a salt-water saucer of fresh water is maintained full to overflowing by the rainfall, and owing to the frictional resistance of the sand and to capillary action and the fact that a given column of fresh water is balanced by a shorter column of sea water, the fresh water never sinks to the mean sea-level unless artificially abstracted. ”

“ From the great number of freshwater forms which we see at this present day acclimatised in, gradually acclimatising themselves in, or periodically or sporadically migrating into, the sea, we must conclude that, under certain circumstances, salt water may cease to be an impassable barrier at some period of the existence of freshwater species, and that many of them have passed from one river through salt water into another. ”

“ Water, which is the gift of God to the thirsty soul, mocks the thirsty soul when it brings with it salt, which is the representative of life. Salt in water is a savor of death unto death, while salt and water are also a savor of life unto life.
While salt as the equivalent of life is a symbol of permanency, it becomes, as the equivalent of death, a symbol of doom and destruction. ”

“ All lakes from which rivers derive their origin, those which fall into the course of rivers, and which carry their water thereto, are not salt. Almost all those, on the contrary, which receive rivers without others issuing thereout, are salt; this seems to favour the opinion that the saltness of the sea arises from the salts which rivers wash from the earth, and continually convey into it; for evaporation cannot carry off fixed salts, and consequently those which rivers carry into the sea remain therein. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Yet this doomed and dead sea of salt is a source of life to man in its exhaustless supply of salt for his use. Preeminently is this salt of the Dead Sea a savor of life and of death.
The salt of the ocean is the world's treasure. Without it the greater portion of the earth's inhabitants would perish for lack of what vivifies and preserves animal life. Yet because of the salt in the ocean the very water, which man and beast must have or perish of thirst, is useless to both man and beast. ”

“ The water will come through sweet and tasteless, the salt having adhered to the surface of the sand grains. Similarly, if a hole is dug near the seashore in the sand, the salt water will seep through, and form a well of more or less tasteless drinking water. ”

“ Each summer it is flooded with salt water when the sea is brought in by strong southwesterly monsoon winds, and the climate during the remainder of the year is hot and dry. By the evaporation of sea water the soil is thus left so salty that no vegetation can grow upon it, and in places beds of salt several feet in thickness have accumulated. Under like conditions salt beds of great thickness have been formed in the past and are now found buried among the deposits of ancient deltas. ”

“ Sea-water is deficient in its proper proportion of salt at the mouths of great rivers, where the volume of fresh water displaces that which properly belongs to the sea, and therefore a river does not obtain much saline matter from that source. ”

“ At the Salt Works they have somehow been heaved up into a swell above the line of general direction, so as to raise the deep strata nigher to the surface, and thus to bring those in which the salt water is found within striking distance. ”

“ Should any difficulty arise in the way of getting the salt water direct from the sea, it may be made artificially by dissolving ‘sea salt’ in the proper proportion of fresh water, or even by purchasing the different salts contained in the sea separately, and then adding them to fresh water in proportionate quantities. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Reptiles and animals of an inferior class are deprived of life by the action of salt water; and such organisms as the amœba, hydra, rotifer, and others of a similar grade which we see in stagnant ponds, are speedily killed if put into water in which salt is dissolved; this is also the case with earth-worms, snails, and indeed all insects as a general rule, especially if generated by animal and vegetable decay. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Lord Bacon mentions somewhere in his works that the ancients discovered that salt water will dissolve salt put into it in less time than fresh water. The same great philosopher also affirms that “salt water passing through earth through ten vessels, one within another, hath not lost its saltness ”

“ The one great body of water that is called the Dead Sea is the saltest sea in the world. Five times the proportion of salt in the ocean is found in this inland sea of salt. "No fish can exist in the waters, nor is it proved that any low forms of life have been discovered there." ”

“ I only mean if we want salt we can have as much as we please by boiling down salt-water in the kettle, or else making a salt-pan in the rocks, and obtaining it by the sun drying up the water and leaving the salt. ”

“ The sea water contains a quantity of salt, but not in the same proportions every where. In the torrid zone, where otherwise, from the excessive heat, it would be in danger of putrefaction, the water is found most salt; as we advance northward its briny quality diminishes, till at the poles it is nearly gone altogether. ”

“ Streams are every day carrying fresh supplies of salt into the sea. Every day, too, millions of tons of water are passing from the ocean into vapor in the atmosphere. The waters of the sea must consequently be getting salter by degrees. ”

“ When it receded, or the ground upheaved, vast subterranean reservoirs of salt water were left, and now, when the rain sinks down into these full reservoirs a portion of the salt water is forced to the surface, which makes the salt springs that are scattered over this part of the country. It is a process that is going on continually. ”

“ The women who are employed at the salt-works collect, at the ebb tide, the earth which is most impregnated with salt, and make heaps of it. After this first operation, they make large vessels or jars, of the earth mixed with straw, and pour into them water, which, in filtering through the earth, carries off all the saline particles. This water is afterwards poured into large coppers, in which it is boiled till nothing remains but the salt. Being collected into heaps, it is then sold to the inhabitants of Kakondy, who have a great market for it in the Fouta. ”

“ The water is drawn up particle by particle, not in masses; and the sun’s rays have no power to lift the ocean-salt, which remains behind, floating still in the sea.
But when a strong wind lashes the surface into waves, and rends the tops of billows into fine spray, it often carries a great deal of salt to a distance. We know how salt may be tasted on the lips miles inland, and how windows near the coast become encrusted with it in stormy weather. Moving air, like moving water, can carry weight ”

“ The flat or driving ice is entirely composed of salt water, which, when dissolved, is found to be salt, and is readily distinguished from the mountain or fresh-water ice by its whiteness and want of transparency. This ice is much more terrible to mariners than that which rises in lumps. A ship generally can avoid the one, as it is seen at a distance; but it frequently gets in amongst the other, which, sometimes closing with resistless force, crushes the doomed vessel to pieces. ”

“ No doubt saltness is a characteristic which would naturally give a name to a river. So it does in the case of the "Salt River" in the U.S., and of the Salza in the Salzkammergut. But I can [76] hardly think that all the many rivers called the Saale are salt, and I am inclined to go deeper for the meaning. The Sansc. has sal, to move, whence salan, water. The first meaning then seems to be water—applied to the sea as the water—and then to salt as derived from the sea. So that when the Gr. άλς, the Old Norse salt, and the Gael. ”

“ It may hence be inferred that the saltness of the sea can not be accounted for by secondary causes, and that it has been salt since the beginning of time. It is indeed impossible to suppose that the waters of the sea were at any time fresh since the formation of fishes and sea-plants; neither will they live in water which is fresh. It may hence be concluded that the saltness of the sea has, with some few exceptions, perhaps arising from mines of rock-salt dispersed near its shores, been nearly the same in all ages. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If that drop had been salt, the salt would not have entered into the air, but stayed on your hand, so when the air drinks up the water from the surface of the Dead Sea, the salt remains behind and the sea gets more and more salty; it is many times more salt than the water of an ordinary sea. ”

“ For instance: when we come to an arm of the sea, as the Red Sea (§ 238) , upon which it never rains, and from which the atmosphere is continually abstracting, by evaporation, fresh water from the salt, we may naturally expect to find a greater proportion of salt in the sea water that remains than we do near the mouth of some great river, as the Amazon, or in the regions of constant precipitation, or other parts where it rains more than it evaporates. ”