botanist again until his travels conduct him to other salt springs, or to the sea-shore, or to the mouth of an estuary. The salt spring at Shirleywick, in Staffordshire, though in the central part of the kingdom, is encircled by such plants. A single pit at Northwich supplies four thou sand tons of salt annually. At Droitwich in Worcestershire, where the salt springs, equalling or surpassing in strength any other in Great Britain, and lying on a bed of rock-salt of unknown depth, are proved by a charter of Kenulf, King of Mercia, to the church at Worcester, to have been worked as early as A. D. 816. The brine is so copious, that nine-tenths of it are permitted to run to waste. Yet the quantity of salt actually made there is very great*. The yearly product of the springs at Koningshorn in Westphalia, approaches to six thousand tons. That of the old spring at Luneburg exceeds twenty-seven thousand tons.

The whole annual quantity of salt at present made in England is stated, by Parkes, to be

* Nash's History of Worcestershire, 2d edition, vol. i. p. 296. 299.

one hundred and ninety-five thousand tons; of which fifty-five thousand are employed in domestic consumption, and the rest is absorbed in our fisheries or in exportation*.

Salt lakes are in many parts frequent; occasionally in Russia, and particularly in Siberia and the Crimea. In Africa they are not seldom found on the summits of mountains.

In no country does an interior accumulation of salt manifest itself more powerfully, or by more varied testimonies, than in Chili. Salt lakes are common; and some of them are from twelve to twenty miles in length. The provinces of Copiapo and Coquimbo are rich in salt springs; and the corresponding portion of the Andes includes several mountains of fossil salt. In Copiapo there is a river denominated Salado, from the extreme saltness of its waters; which, as Molina observes, in terms indicating its magnitude, has its source, "like the other large rivers," in the Andes, and falls into the Pacific Ocean. The salt crytallises in great purity along its banks. In a valley in the Andes, in

Thoughts on the Laws relating to Salt, p. 197.

lat. 34° 40', inhabited by the Pehuenches, and about fifteen miles in circumference, the ground is entirely covered to the depth of six feet with pure salt spontaneously crystallised from eleven springs. It is collected in large masses for domestic purposes*.

'The facts which have now been adduced appear to suggest and to substantiate the following

conclusions.

The earth, as to its exterior strata, is not at present in the same condition in which it was when it came forth from the hand of its Creator; but has manifestly undergone universal and violent and overwhelming convulsions of such a nature as to spread general destruction among the animated inhabitants of its surface at the time of the catastrophe.

Such a convulsion of the globe can be assigned to no other cause than the will of its Creator; and must, therefore, be regarded as His act. Whether it pleased Him to accomplish it by an immediate interposition of His

* Molina's History of Chili, translated, &c. vol. i. p. 39, 40, 41. 66.

power, or through the medium of secondary causes previously arranged by Him in such a manner, as to burst into effect at the appointed time, is a point of indifference to the argument.

A convulsion thus effected by the hand of the Creator, and reducing, at the time of its occurrence, the inhabited surface of the earth into a state of desolation and ruin, does not appear to admit of any other explanation than the fol lowing that a moral change calling for such an event had taken place in that portion of the inhabitants of the earth, which was endued with moral agency and responsibility; in other words, that mankind had offended their Creator, by transgression of his laws, and had brought upon themselves penal consequences of disobedience. For other suppositions, abstractedly capable of being assigned for the subversion of an inhabited globe, as that the Deity purposed to employ it in a new mode, or no longer to employ it at all, are negatived by the fact, that He was pleased to continue to employ it, and to re-people it, in whatever way, with tribes of beings similar to those which he had destroyed.

The universality of this overwhelming con. vulsion, and the corresponding co-extensiveness of the destruction, prove the general infliction, and, consequently, the state of transgression to have been universal. It was not a partial visitation upon a separate portion of offenders, like the fiery tempest on Sodom and Gomorrah. It was the descent of avenging justice to envelope a world lying wholly under the penalty of Sin.

By this universal convulsion shaking the earth to unknown depths, and piling the reliques of the ocean on the summits of the mountains, it is evident that the human race must have been totally extinguished, had not the Creator been pleased, in the midst of judgment, to remember mercy, and by some mode of miraculous interference, or by some specific direction and provision, to preserve certain individuals for the continuation of the race, when the avenging dispensation should have passed away. And if some individuals were mercifully spared and protected, in order that ultimately they might replenish the earth with their posterity; it is reasonable to conclude, that the principal, at least, of the persons, who should thus find grace in the eyes of God,

G