Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/546

532 miles away from the said line, and they have started "pointers," after the manner of the oil-country, to mark the limits of the territory. The geologists affirm that all the salt of Syracuse, Warsaw, Saginaw, and even of Wisconsin and Iowa, belongs to the Onondaga salt-group, and that it was deposited all over this extensive tract in a chain of land-locked lakes fed by occasional overflows from the ocean, and depositing their saline contents by evaporation. A similar process is now going on at the Runn of Cutch, of which Sir Charles Lyell says: "That successive layers of salt might be thrown down, one upon another, over thousands of square miles in such a region, is undeniable. The supply of water from the ocean would be as inexhaustible as the supply of heat from the sun for its evaporation." This theory will explain why the dip of the salt-strata of Western New York, added to the natural rise of the ground, makes a boring of fifteen hundred feet necessary at Warsaw, while at Salina a depth of only two hundred feet is required.

In this fact of the strata coming nearer the surface to the northward of them lies the danger to the hopes of the people of Warsaw. In many other respects they are warranted in believing that they have a bonanza. The "pointers" that have been already sunk and the unsuccessful experiments that have been made in former years show that the beds of rock-salt do not extend farther north than Caledonia, in Livingston County, nor farther south than Castile, in Wyoming County. The narrow strip within which the beds are confined runs from Onondaga County, on the east, through the counties of Cayuga, Seneca, Yates, Ontario, Livingston, and Wyoming, to Erie on the west.

The claim that the sign "Warsaw salt" represents a superior article appears to be well-founded—the brine having been analyzed with flattering results by Dr. Lattimore, of Rochester, and Dr. Englehart, State chemist, of Syracuse. The latter reports the specific gravity to be 1·205. The analysis of 100 parts is as follows: Sulphate of lime, ·257; chloride of calcium, ·068; chloride of magnesium, ·005; chloride of sodium, 26·300; pure water, 73·370. The exceptionally small proportion of the chlorides of calcium and magnesium will be noted, as well as the large proportion of pure salt which the recent superintendent of the Syracuse salt-springs declares entitles the Warsaw brine to rank as 100 to 66 for the Syracuse brine. An analysis of the manufactured article shows the following results: