THE SALT DEPOSITS 
1 
cr 
Br . 
SO, . 
CO, . 
Na . 
K. . 
Ca . 
Mg . : 
Salinity 
fi. 
41-78 
05 
23-78 
"03 
24-49 
60 
2:60 
B. 
50°26 
08 
15:57 
*13 
25-71 
vi 
7:07 
7 per cent, 16-3096 per cent. 
y 
They show that the northern Caspian (A) receives much 
normal river-water, and that the water in Karabugas (B), 
has lost most of its carbonate, and nearly all its sulphate of 
lime, and is almost a bittern. During the dry season sul- 
phates of lime and sodium are deposited on the floor of Kara- 
bugas, but none of the chlorides; for they escape as an out- 
flow of heavy brine. If the bar between the Caspian and 
Karabugas were raised so that the basin were isolated, then 
further evaporation of the water would precipitate the 
sodium chloride as rock-salt and the chlorides of potash and 
magnesium as carnallite. If the wind covered the basin 
with clay, these deposits might be preserved. The load of 
salts might cause the subsidence of the area, and enable the 
sea to reflood the basin. Another sheet of gypsum and salt 
would be deposited. Many successive subsidences would 
result in a great thickness of salt deposits. 
Thick beds of salt would also be produced if an extensive 
inland sea were reduced by evaporation and its water con- 
centrated in one depression and the salts all deposited there. 
If the salt deposits were 15 feet thick for each 1000 feet of 
sea-water, and they were laid down over only 1 square mile 
for every 100 square miles of the dwindling sea, the deposits 
over the mile would be 1500 feet in thickness. 
Neither the bar theory nor that of concentration in one 
part of a basin is exactly applicable to the German salt 
deposits, for sea-water does not contain enough calcium 
to produce the enormous quantities of sulphate of lime that 
occur there. The basin while undergoing evaporation, must 
have continually received river-water containing lime. 
Accordingly the bar theory was rejected for Central Germany