2-888-359 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Marston Salt-Pit, [Cheshire], 1850. Salt '...was an ingredient alike in pure religious rites, an instrument of sorcery, and a medicinal application...Salt was considered a substance the most acceptable to the gods. Salted meal entered every sacrifice of the Romans...Men and inferior animals are alike fond of it: and to both, in greater or smaller quantities, it is a necessary of existence...Salt is, also, highly useful as a manure for some descriptions of soils - and especially in gardens for the cultivation of particular flowers...Dr. Buckland in his "Bridgewater Treatise," speaks in similar terms:- "Had not," he says, "the beneficent providence of the Creator laid up great 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 portion of mankind...'. From "Illustrated London News", 1850.