time Lake Elton will disappear like so many other similar lakes, and its salt will become covered by sand and soil.

We have seen that an inland sea, in disappearing by evaporation, divides into a number of smaller portions, which again subdivide as the water diminishes. These smaller lakes, filling the various depressions, become gradually more salty, and if they receive little or no fresh water, dry up entirely, leaving only layers of salt or salty mud and sand. The layers of salt depend in thickness upon the depth of the depression. We have found that instances of all kinds of salt lakes have been presented to us in the deserts of Asia, and we have learned how layers of rock salt, varying from a few inches to many feet, have been formed. The whole history of the formation of salt in the present era is given to us in the Asiatic deserts, which have shown us old seabottoms where scarcely any vestiges of water remain, as in Arabia, Persia, and Scinde. Others where, as in Tibet and the higher portions of the Gobi, the water has in many cases entirely evaporated, leaving the rock salt behind; in other cases still showing strongly saline lakes; and where the rainfall is in excess, chains of fresh water lakes connected with rivers. In the lower portion of the Shamo, as in the basin of Lake Lob, we have swamps and salt lakes of considerable extent, with here and there smaller ones of great saltness, and salt encrusted plains. In the Steppes, a stage lower still, many of the larger lakes are only salty to a small extent, whilst some of the small ones are intensely salt. In the Aral and the Caspian we see the seas themselves just in the process of disappearing. The large sea of which the Caspian forms merely the lowest portion, existed in post pliocene times the age of the mammoth and early man. The great inland sea of Central Asia, called by the Chinese Hanhai, or "the dried-up sea," covered the Mongolian plateau at the end of the chalk age, and continued for a considerably

longer period before it lost its connection with the main ocean through Dzungaria.

Arguing from the known to the unknown, there cannot be a doubt but that the Triassic Period was one of great salt lakes. It seems to me that during the Carboniferous Period the land was in many places slowly sinking. This continued for some time until the Permian Period, when great changes. took place, and the land once more began to rise and chains of hills to be elevated. The Permian Period, according to Ramsey, was one of great inland lakes and seas. The animal life of the period indicates water and land just emerged and emerging from the water. The process continued throughout the Triassic Period, which was one of innumerable salt lakes of great depth. It was also almost certainly a period when, in many places, huge deserts extended, and when the evaporation far exceeded the rainfall. It would present to our view the same appearance that Asia, in its steppes of the Aralo-Caspian region and South-West Siberia, and its deserts of Mongolia, now presents to us. Whether the great oceans of the Triassic Period were more salty than our own I cannot say, but it seems probable, for unless there is a continual creation of new salt in the ocean to replace the enormous quantities deposited by its waters in the manner above described, the proportion of salt must continually be decreasing. Whatever may have been the saltness of the ancient seas, the salt deposits of the Triassic and some other later periods exceed enormously in thickness any that are now being deposited. The Speremberg boring, to which I referred in my Paper on "The Great European Salt Deposits," "was carried to the depth of 4,172 feet, and was entirely in rock salt, with the exception of the first 283 feet, which were in gypsum, with some anhydrite." Other deposits, as I mentioned, have been many hundreds of feet in thickness. There are points in connection with the early deposits of rock salt

not satisfactorily explained, but it seems clear to me that the general process may be now considered as tolerably well settled, and that our salt deposits of past ages were formed in a similar manner to those of the present time. I can see no reason for believing that volcanoes had anything to do with the early deposits, though this is a favourite theory of some writers. The clay interspersed through the salt shows clearly enough that streams of muddy water ran into the lakes at certain seasons, and the absence of animal or vegetable remains, with but few exceptions, show that, as now, the surrounding country must have been to a large extent barren. The theory that all old salt deposits were formed in salt lakes occupying the lowest portions of the country enables us to understand many peculiarities connected with rock salt, as, for instance, its occurrence in patches of no great extent, but often of great thickness; the clayey matters with which it is impregnated; and, especially in Cheshire, the existence of brine in large quantities. In this latter case the salt occupies the lowest portion of an inland drainage system, and any water percolating through the superior strata would necessarily follow the old drainage lines, and thus reach the salt deposit, and become saturated.

Without pretending to explain everything in connection with our old salt deposits, I hope I have shown how almost certainly they were formed, and what the state of the country in which they were being deposited was, and as a consequence what the general state of a great portion of the earth was during the Triassic Period.

TREVELYAN'S MACAULAY.

BY EDWARD R. RUSSELL.

LORD MACAULAY is a figure of sufficient importance in English literature to demand to be contemplated afresh when any important revelation is made as to the features of his character and the method of his life. And a great communication has lately been made to the public, by the fittest and most competent person, with the effect of apprising us of just that which was unknown in reference to this great author's personality. Apart from the interest of its contents, Mr. Trevelyan's work has been pronounced worthy to rank with two or three great biographies which have distanced all other books of their class. If opportunity served, and it were possible to compare the materials at the command of the good and bad writers by whom our biographical shelves have been stocked, it would be an interesting question, how and wherein such a life as has been produced by Lord Macaulay's nephew comes to differ so notably and acceptably from many others written with similar advantages. On the whole, this Society will not be unwilling to review the career of a writer who did so much to form the minds of men now middle-aged, under the agreeable and yet searching light which has been newly shed upon it. The subject is simple, and of moderate interest, compared with many that we have discussed; and it would not be consistent with the claims of the Society to make it as entertaining as it might be if even a tithe of the anecdotes in Mr. Trevelyan's book were now to be recited. But it is fitting that a literary association should take appreciative notice of this new appraisement of a great literary man.

T