it forms a communication with a permanent subterranean sheet of water, affording plentiful supplies to the inhabitants of upland districts, which are above the level of natural springs.
A further benefit which man derives from the disposition of the mineral ingredients of the secondary strata, results from the extensive diffusion of muriate of soda, or common salt, throughout certain portions of these strata, especially those of the new red sandstone formation. Had not the beneficent providence of the Creator laid up these stores of salt within the bowels of the earth, the distance of inland countries from the sea would have rendered this article of prime and daily necessity, unattainable to a large proportion of mankind: but, under the existing dispensation, the presence of mineral salt, in strata which are dispersed generally over the interior of our continents and larger islands, is a source of health, and daily enjoyment, to the inhabitants of almost every region of the earth.[1] Muriate of soda is also among the most abundant of the saline compounds formed by sublimation in the craters of volcanos.
With respect to the state of animal life, during the deposition of the Secondary strata, although the petrified re. mains of Zoophytes, Crustacea, Testacea, and Fishes, show that the seas in which these strata were formed, like those which gave birth to the Transition series, abounded with creatures referable to the four existing divisions of the animal kingdom, still the condition of the globe seems not yet to have been sufficiently advanced in tranquillity, to admit
- ↑ Although the most frequent position of rock salt, and of salt springs, is in strata of the new red sandstone formation, which has consequently been designated by some geologists as the saliferous system, yet it is not exclusively confined to them. The salt mines of Wieliezka and Sicily are in tertiary formations; those of Cardona in cretaceous; some of those in the Tyrol in the oolites; and near Durham there are salt springs in the coal formation.
