rmed on the bottom of a kettle. Gypsum is the first material to be so
thrown down, because it is less soluble than common salt, and therefore
sooner got rid of. It forms a thick bottom layer in the bed of all
evaporating inland seas; and as plaster of Paris it not only gives rise
finally to artistic monstrosities hawked about the streets for the
degradation of national taste, but also plays an important part in the
manufacture of bonbons, the destruction of the human digestion, and the
ultimate ruin of the dominant white European race. Only about a third of
the water in a salt lake need be evaporated before the gypsum begins to
be deposited in a solid layer over its whole bed; it is not till 93 per
cent. of the water has gone, and only 7 per cent. is left, that common
salt begins to be thrown down. When that point of intensity is reached,
the salt, too, falls as a sediment to the bottom, and there overlies the
gypsum deposit. Hence all the world over, wherever we come upon a bed
of rock salt, it almost invariably lies upon a floor of solid gypsum.

The Caspian, being still a very respectable modern sea, constantly
supplied with fresh water from the surrounding rivers, has not yet begun
by any means to deposit salt on its bottom from its whole mass; but the
shallow pools and long bays around its edge have crusts of beautiful
rose-coloured salt-crystals forming upon their sides; and as these
lesser basins gradually dry up, the sand, blown before the wind, slowly
drifts over them, so as to form miniature rock-salt beds on a very small
scale. Nevertheless, the young and vigorous Caspian only represents the
first stage in the process of evaporation of an inland sea. It is still
fresh enough to form the abode of fish and mollusks; and the
irrepressible young lady of the present generation is perhaps even aware
that it contains numbers of seals, being in fact the seat of one of the
most important and valuable seal-fisheries in the whole world. It may be
regarded as a typical example of a yet youthful and lively inland sea.

The Dead Sea, on the other hand, is an old and decrepit salt lake in a
very advanced state of evaporation. It lies several feet below the level
of the Mediterranean, just as the Caspian lies several feet below the
level of the Black Sea; and as in both cases the surface must once have
been continuous, it is clear that the water of either sheet must have
dried up to a very considerable extent. But, while the