Brine Springs

Brine-Springs, springs saturated with common salt (q.v.) or sodium chloride, often in association with other substances, occur especially in districts where there are underground deposits of rock-salt (q.v.) from its solution by percolating spring waters. Sometimes, as in Cheshire, where the affluents of the river Weaver have found their way into old salt mines, it may be simpler to pump the salt to the surface as brine than to mine it as a solid. In the states of New York, Virginia, Ohio, Michigan and Kentucky salt is largely obtained from springs, and such waters may issue from deep-seated Triassic deposits, as apparently at St. Clement's, Oxford, and perhaps at Swindon, Wilts, far from their outcrop. Brine is commonly pumped over faggots to precipitate any carbonate of lime it may contain.