[47] In the great desert of Gobi, which is supposed to have been originally the bed of the sea which communicated through the Caspian with the Baltic, as confirmatory of this theory, salt is found in great quantities mixed with the soil. To go a step further, we may infer that the lake in Western Thibet (called Tsomoriri) may have been in prehistoric times joined with this vanished sea, and if so would account for its being saline.
[48] Sir Charles Lyell’s “Principles of Geology.”
[49] In rocks of igneous origin, of which there are many and varied sorts in Australia, no fossils are found except in those rare cases where animal or vegetable bodies have become invested in a stream of lava or overwhelmed by a volcanic shower.
[50] Pigeons are always attracted by a lump of salt, and there is a kind of bait called a salt-cat which is usually made at salt-works.
[51] “Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation.”
[52] See page 28, chap. iii.
[53] During the famine in Armenia in the year 1880 the people were most distressed because they had no means to supply themselves with salt, the want of which they felt even more than the lack of food.
[54] It is an interesting fact that the gastric juice varies in different classes of animals, according to the food on which they subsist; thus in birds of prey as kites, hawks, and owls, it only acts on animal matter, and does not dissolve vegetables; in other birds, and in all animals feeding on grass, as oxen, sheep, and hares, it dissolves vegetable matter, as grass, but will not touch flesh of any kind.
[55] The Medical Press “Analytical Reports on the Principal Bottled Waters,” by Professor Ticheborne and Dr. Prosser James.
[56] An alkaline spring has just been discovered in Bunhill Row which possesses most of the constituents of Carlsbad water, but in a dilute degree. A tube well, 217 feet in depth, has been recently completed on the premises of Messrs. Le Grand and Sutcliff, artesian well engineers. From an analysis which has been made of the spring found in the chalk it appears to be soft water possessing the characteristics which are peculiar to the above-mentioned famous German Spa. The well, although artesian, is only so to a partial extent, and a pump of a novel construction raises the water from 128 feet, and delivers it at the surface.