on account of ship shortage, they were confined chiefly to the West Indies. A considerable tonnage of specially prepared kiln-dried salt, desired by butter-makers, is imported from Liverpool, England. There are also some small imports from Canada, probably because of geographic location. Exports of domestic salt go chiefly to Canada, Cuba, and New Zealand, with smaller amounts to practically all parts of the world.
Salt is recovered from salt beds in two ways. About a fourth of the salt produced in the United States is mined through shafts in the same manner as coal, the lumps of salt being broken and sized just as coal is prepared for the market. The larger part of the United States production, however, is derived by pumping water down to the beds to dissolve the salt, and pumping the resulting brine to the surface where it is then evaporated. A considerable amount of salt, also, is recovered from natural brines—which represent the solution of rock salt by ground-waters—and from the waters of salt lakes and the ocean.
Geologic Features
Common salt constitutes the mineral halite, the composition of which is sodium chloride. It is rarely found perfectly pure in nature, but is commonly mixed with other saline materials, such as gypsum and anhydrite, and occasionally with salts of potassium and magnesium. The general grade of rock-salt deposits, where not admixed with clay, is perhaps 96 to 99 per cent of sodium chloride.
The ultimate source of salt deposits is the sodium and chlorine of igneous rocks. In the weathering of these rocks the soda, being one of the more soluble materials, is leached out and carried off by ground-waters, and in the end a large part of it reaches the sea. The chlorine follows a similar course; however, the amount of chlorine in ordinary igneous rocks is so extremely small that, in order to explain the amount of chlorine present in the sea, it has been thought necessary to appeal to volcanic emanations or to some similar agency. Ocean water contains about 3.5 per cent by weight of dissolved matter, over three-fourths of which consists of the constituents of common salt. Chief among the other dissolved materials are magnesium, calcium, potassium, and SO_4 (the sulphuric acid radical).
When sea water evaporates it becomes saturated with various salts, according to the amounts of these salts present and their relative solubilities. In a general way, after 37 per cent of the water has evaporated gypsum begins to separate out, and after 93 per cent has evaporated common salt begins to be deposited. After a large part of the common salt has been precipitated, the residual liquid, called a "bittern" or "mother liquid," contains chiefly a concentration of the salts of magnesium and potassium. Still further evaporation will result in their deposition, mainly as complex salts like those found in the Stassfurt deposit (p. 113).
The actual processes of concentration and precipitation in sea water or other salt waters are much more complex than is indicated by the above simple outline. The solubility of each of the various salts present, and consequently the rate at which each will crystallize out as evaporation proceeds, depends upon the kinds and