the shareholders would form a snug little
body among themselves. In the time of
Charles the Second there were about four
hundred and eighty phats, held by about a
hundred and fifty shareholders. These
holders claimed, not only the brine in the
three existing pits, but also the right to
prevent any one else from sinking any other
pit, even on his own freehold ground. But,
one stout Mr. Stegnor, stout in heart and in
pocket, defied all the corporate shareholders
mid all their phats; he dug for brine on his
own ground, he found it, he defended his
right in all sorts of law courts and equity
courts, and finally conquered; whereupon
the phatsmen lost their monopoly, and salt
fell gradually from two shillings to fourpence
per bushel.

But, the strangest stage in the history of
the Droitwich Works occurred during the
time of George the First. The mayor of the
town, hearing that the brine-pits of Cheshire
were very much deeper than those at Droit-
wich, bethought him that it might be well to
have the corporate pits bored or dug deeper;
it was done; when up rushed such a flood
of brine that two of the well-sinkers were
drowned before they could get out of the
way; and the supply became henceforward
so abundant that there was no occasion to
limit the phats to a definite quantity, or to
limit the working to half-yearly spells. In
fact, what with the lawyers on the one side,
and the well-diggers on the other, the phatsmen
completely lost their monopoly; and
many annuities, many widows' jointures,
many funds for schools and hospitals and
almshouses, many pensions, many charities,
were interfered with, causing a good deal of
distress in the town, until matters had
righted themselves.

During the same century many additional
pits were sunk. Generally they went through
forty or fifty feet of marl, then a hundred
or more of gypsum, and then was found a
subterranean river of brine, about two feet
in depth, flowing over a bed of rock-salt of
unknown thickness; when the boring
penetrated quite through the stratum of gypsum,
then did the brine burst upward with great
force to the surface. Time was, when men
dipped up the brine with hand-worked
buckets; then they used horse-wheels; and
now they use steam-engines. Time was, when
the neighbouring forests were stripped of
their trees to supply fuel for the salt-pans;
but canals and railways now bring a plentiful
supply of good coal, and Drayton's wood-
nymph need not be further dishevelled.

In one of the earliest volumes of the
Philosophical Transactions, not much less than two
centuries back, when the Royal Society was
just beginning to feel its way, the salt-springs
of Cheshire and Worcestershire came in for
a reasonable share of very reasonable
speculation. Some searcher for knowledge
propounded a long string of queries: What is
the depth of the salt-springs? What kind of
country 'tis thereabout? What plants grow
near them? Whether there be any hot
springs near the salt ones? Whether the
water of the salt-springs be hotter or cooler
than other spring water? Whether they find
any shells about those springs; and what
kind of earth it is? How strong the water
is of salt? What is the manner of their
working? Whether the salt made of these
springs be more or less apt to dissolve in the
air than other salt? Whether it be as good
to powder beef or other flesh with, as French
salt? Whether those salt-springs do yield
less water, and more of the salt, in great
droughts than in wet seasons? How long
before the spring, or in the spring it may be,
before the fountains break out-into their
fullest sources? How much water the springs
yield daily? At what distance are the springs
from the sea? How near the foot of any hill
is to those springs, and what height the next
hill is of? To all, or nearly all of these
queries very sensible answers were given by
one " learned and observing William Jackson,
Doctor of Physick." It is easy to see that the
querist had the salt salt seas in his mind
tracing his questions: and many others would
naturally associate, in some indefinite way,
the salt of the brine with the salt of the
ocean. But, Doctor Jackson only knew about
Cheshire salt, and like a good philosopher
limited his replies to that which was within
his own knowledge. A Droitwich authority,
Doctor Thomas Rastell, afterwards took up
the matter, and gave a similar string of
replies to the queries, in relation to the brine-
springs of Worcestershire. One of his answers
gives as clear a notion of the saline strength
of the brine as anything we can imagine. He
says, that at the Upwich pit, there were three
sorts of brine, which were drawn from three
different depths, and were called by the
workpeople First-man, Middle-man, and Last-
man. A measure that, when filled with
distilled water, would weigh twenty-four ounces,
was filled with First-man, and then weighed
thirty-one ounces; it was filled with Second-
man, and then weighed thirty ounces; it was
filled with Last-man, and then weighed
twenty-nine ounces. So that the average of
the brine was one-fourth heavier than
distilled water; and as this weightiness was
produced wholly by the salt, it followed that
four tons of brine would yield one ton of salt.
Brine-boiling and salt-making, is hot steaming
work. Go into any one of the works, and
you will see men naked to the waist,
employed in an atmosphere only just bearable
by strangers. You see that the brine is
pumped up from the pits into reservoirs: you
see ranges of large shallow quadrangular iron
pans, placed over fiercely heated furnaces:
you see the brine flow into the pans, and in
due time bubble and boil and evaporate with
great rapidity: you see that the salt
evidently separates by degrees from the water,