when Nature was partly freed from this
thraldom: when the seas subsided, and the
face of the dry land appeared, and man and
salt were simultaneously deposited on it, salt
lost none of its importance. It was not
only that salt still swayed the seas, and that
the teeming vegetation and crowded life of
those mighty waters were modified by salt as
they are now—so subject to its influence, that
they must have salt daily and hourly or they
die; but man began to seek for the salt
deposited on the earth. In the earliest divine
record of man's history, salt plays a foremost
part. Read, for instance, that sacred ordinance
which commands the addition of salt to every
offering and oblation. A Talmudic fantasy
of the Hebrew commentator Rabbi Shelomo
exists, which may be transformed into a
graceful fable. When, at the creation, the
waters below, now called the seas, he gravely
narrates, were banished to this gloomy earth,
they repined at the happiness of those celestial
waters which were spread out above the
firmament, destined to flow through eternal
fields of amaranth, in rhythm with the choiring
of angelic voices, and privileged to waft
seraphic harmony to the foot of the throne of
glory. In grace, it was promised to them, that
they should be perpetually employed in God's
service, and offered in all offerings and sacrifices.
Hence the Mosaic ordinance. It may
be that, in the sad moans of the restless waves,
we hear their lament for earthly exile; but
who doubts that they, in common with all
Creation, are continually performing God's
work, and in this are made happy? Often
again salt appears in the Sacred Volume as
the emblem of eternity: of repentance; of
reconciliation, and of wisdom. Numa among
the Etruscans, Pythagoras among the Greeks,
repeated the precept of Moses. "Do not
speak of Deity without fire; nor sacrifice
without salt." Pythagoras calls it "a
substance dear to the gods:" Homer calls it
"divine;" and Plutarch says "divine
indeed; because it symbolises the soul, which
is of divine nature, and preserves the body
from dissolution whilst it there resides, as
salt preserves flesh from putrefaction." Salt
has always been, and is now amongst
the Arabs, the emblem of hospitality. It figures
largely in eastern story. A thief, for instance,
entering an Arab tent by night, when the
master is asleep, seizes some food and
becomes aware of the flavour of salt; bound
involuntarily by the laws of hospitality, he
withdraws without carrying out his felonious
intention. In the story of the Forty Thieves,
the chief robber who enters the house of
Morgiana's master on a false pretence, is
enjoined to make such excuses, whenever his
host offers him salt, as will enable him to
refuse partaking of it without suspicion.

In our time not only is salt mixed with all
our food:

For cooks would deem't a grievous fault
Were viands eaten without salt.

but the salt-cellar has become a never-failing
appendage to our table. In England the
amount of salt consumed gives twenty pounds
per annum to each individual: in France the
average ranges at about fifteen pounds; but,
in some countries, the love of salt amounts
to a passion. In Abyssinia, every man
carries a lump of salt; and, when he meets
a friend, he gives it to him to lick: his friend
returning the compliment with all the grace
of which an Abyssinian dandy, butter-
anointed to his head, is capable. The little
children beg for it as for sugar. In India, when
the gabelle, or salt-tax, made it penal for the
natives to go down on their knees and lick the
salt stones, the enactment produced
insurrection. In France the salt duties were so often
violated, that in, one year, four thousand
persons were thrown into prison for the offence.
Yet the sea is full of salt, and the sea is
made for all. Animals love salt not less than
man. Cows in pasture lick it up with avidity,
so also horses and most other animals. The
salt-licks of America bear the name of
Bigbone Licks; for here are found great heaps
of bones; relics of the Pre-Adamite
inhabitants of Earth; uncouth monsters who
came floundering down in search of salt, and
sank there impacted in the mud, never to
rise again.

We may question those learned in the
mysteries of the animal and human frame, if we
would learn the secret of this strange yearning
after salt which ages have not diminished,
nor civilisation annihilated. Salt occurs in
every part of the human body. It is
organised in the solids, and dissolved in the fluids;
it creeps into every corner of the frame, and
plays a part in all the complicated processes
of life, without which the machinery would
be arrested in its operation. Thus, all our
nutritive food consists either of fibrin, albumen,
or casein; and neither of these could be
assimilated, and used in building up the flesh
that walls about our life, unless salt were
present: neither being soluble except in a
saline fluid. Salt constitutes a fifth part of the
ash of muscle, and a tenth part of the ash of
cartilage: it supplies the acid of the gastric
juice: it so essentially helps assimilation, that
its absence would create a difficulty in getting
rid of the effete materials of the frame. The
relative amount of salt in the body is incapable
of great alteration; for there appears to
be a special sense which provides for the
necessary dilution of salt with water. This
is the sense of thirst, which wakes up within
us when we have thrown too much salt into
the circulation, and plagues and torments us;
calling for water—more water!

Suppose, then, salt to be cut off from the
food of man or animal. Would they suffer?
There are not wanting doctors, both in physic
and philosophy, who maintain that, without
salt, we could no more live than without
bread: and the learned have not failed to
note that malach, the Hebrew expression