court was much Frenchified, the name was perhaps derived from the French vendois, a dace; to which a slight observer might be tempted to compare it by the whiteness of its scales. The British name gwiniad or whiting was bestowed upon it for the same reason. It is a gregarious fish, and approaches the shores in vast shoals in spring and in summer; which proves in many places a relief to the poor of inland countries, as the annual return of the herring is to those who inhabit the coasts. Between 7000 and 8000 have been taken at one draught. The whiting is a fish of an insipid taste, and must be eaten soon, for it will not keep long; those that choose to preserve them do it with salt. They die very soon after they are taken. Their spawning season in Llyntegid is in December. The largest whiting we ever heard of weighed between three and four pounds; the head is small, smooth, and of a dusky hue; the eyes very large; the pupil of a deep blue; the nose blunt at the end; the jaws of equal length; the mouth small and toothless; the branchiostegous rays nine; the covers of the gills silvery, powdered with black. The back is a little arched, and slightly carinated; the color, as far as the lateral line, is glossed with deep blue and purple; but towards the lines assumes a silvery cast, tinged with gold; beneath which those colors entirely prevail. The tail is very much forked; the scales are large, and adhere close to the body.

6. S. salar, the common salmon, is a northern fish, being unknown in the Mediterranean Sea and other warm climates; it is found in France in some of the rivers that fall into the ocean, and north as far as Greenland; they are also very common in the northern parts of North America. They are in several countries a considerable article of commerce; they are stationary fisheries in Iceland, Norway, and the Baltic; and in Great Britain, on the Tweed, at Berwick, and in various rivers of Scotland. See our article FISHERIES. In Cumberland they go up the river Derwent in September, through the lake of Bassenthwaite, up the river which runs through Keswick into the Vale of St. John, where they deposit their spawn in the small streams and feeders of the lake. The young salmon are called salmon smelts, and go down to the sea with the first floods in May. The salmon was known to the Romans, but not to the Greeks. Pliny speaks of it as a fish found in the rivers of Aquitaine: Ausonius enumerates it among those of the Moselle. The salmon is a fish that lives both in the salt and fresh waters; quitting the sea at certain seasons for the sake of depositing its spawn, in security, in the gravelly beds of rivers remote from their mouths. There is scarcely any difficulties but what they will overcome to arrive at places fit for their purpose; they will ascend rivers hundreds of miles, force themselves against the most rapid streams, and spring with amazing agility over cataracts of several feet in height. Salmon are frequently taken in the Rhine as high up as Basil; they gain the sources of the Lapland rivers in spite of their torrent like currents, and surpass the perpendicular falls of Leixslip, Kennerth, and Pont Aberglastyn. The salmon is so generally known that a very brief descrip

tion will serve. It has been known to weigh seventy-four pounds. The color of the back and sides is gray, sometimes spotted with black, sometimes plain; the covers of the gills are subject to the same variety; the belly silvery; the nose sharp-pointed; the end of the under jaw in the males often turns up in the form of a hook; sometimes this curvature is very considerable; it is said that they lose this hook when they return to the sea. The teeth are lodged in the jaws and on the tongue, and are slender but very sharp; the tail is a little forked. When the fish enter the Friths, or mouths of the rivers, at the commencement of their upward migration, and are thus in good condition, they are termed, in the language of fishermen, clean fish. At this period they are infested with the salmon louse, caligus productus of naturalists, and which chiefly adhere to the more insensible parts. But when arrived at the place of spawning, the fish is lean, as the whole fat of the body has passed into the melt and the roe. In this state, in which they are termed red fish, they are worthless as an article of food. After the fish have spawned they are termed kelts or foul fish, and are equally despised with the red fish. The gills are now more or less covered with the entomoda salmonea. The motion of the fish upwards from the sea to the river and place of spawning is influenced by several causes. When there is abundance of fresh water in the Friths the fish seem to proceed regularly and rapidly up the middle of the stream, enter the rivers, and hasten on to their destination. In returning to the sea, after spawning, the fish seem to keep the middle of the stream in the river, and the deepest and saltest water in the Friths. Salmon enter the river at all seasons of the year, but they approach in greatest numbers during the summer months. Fish taken in May, June, and July, are much fatter than fish in the same condition as to spawning, taken in February, March, or April. They fall off in fatness very rapidly from August to January, when they are leanest. The principal spawning season is in November, December, and January. See FISHERIES. Salmon fisheries, Marshal observes, are copious and constant sources of human food; they rank next to agriculture. They have indeed one advantage over every other internal produce: their increase does not lessen other articles of human sustenance. The salmon does not prey on the produce of the soil, nor does it owe its size and nutritive qualities to the destruction of its compatriot tribes. It leaves its native river at an early state of growth; and, going even naturalists know not where, returns of ample size, and rich in human nourishment; exposing itself in the narrowest streams, as if nature intended it as a special boon to man. In every stage of savageness and civilisation the salmon must have been considered as a valuable benefaction to this country.' From the extremity of the Highlands, and from the Orkney and Shetland Islands, these fish are sent up to the London market in ice; and when the season is at its height, and the catch more than can be taken off hand fresh, they are then salted, pickled, or dried, for winter consumption at home, and for the foreign markets. Perhaps the fishery of

net.

the Tweed is the first in point of quantity caught, which is sometimes quite astonishing, several hundreds being taken at a single draught of the Formerly it was all pickled and kitled, after being boiled, and sent to London under the name of Newcastle salmon ; but the present mode has so raised the value of the fish as nearly to have banished this article of food from the inhabitants in the environs of the fishery, except as an expensive luxury. Within memory, salted salmon formed a material article of economy in all the farm houses of the vale of Tweed, insomuch that indoor servants often bargained that they should not be obliged to take more than two weekly meals of salmon. It could then be bought at 2s. the stone, of nineteen pounds weight; it is now never below 12s., often 36s., and sometimes two guineas.

7. S. thymallus, the umber, or grayling, haunts clear and rapid streams, and particularly those that flow through mountainous countries. It is found in the rivers of Derbyshire; in some of those of the north; in the Tame near Ludlow; in the Lug, and other streams near Leominster. It is also very common in Lapland; the inhabitants make use of the entrails of this fish instead of rennet, to make the cheese which they get from the milk of the rein deer. It is a voracious fish, rises freely to the fly, and will very eagerly take a bait. It is a very swift swimmer, and disappears like the transient passage of a shadow, whence it derived the name of umbra.

8. S. trutta, the sea trout, migrates like the salmon up several of our rivers, spawns, and returns to the sea. The shape is more thick than the common trout; the irides silver; the head thick, smooth, and dusky, with a gloss of blue and green; the back of the same color, which grows fainter towards the side line. The back is plain, but the sides, as far as the lateral line, are marked with large distinct irregular-shaped spots of black; the lateral line straight; the sides beneath the line and the belly are white. Tail broad, and even at the end. The flesh when boiled is of a pale red, but well flavored.

SALM'ON, n. s. Lat. salmo; Fr. saûmon. A well-known fish.

They poke them with an instrument somewhat like the salmon spear. Carew's Survey of Cornwall. They take salmon and trouts by groping and tickling them under the bellies in the pools, where they hover, and so throw them on land.

Carew.

of the Rev. Thomas Salmon, M. A., rector of Mepsall. He was admitted of Benet College, Cambridge, June 11th, 1690, and took the degree of LL. D. in 1695. He then entered into orders, and became curate of Westmill, in Hertfordshire; but, although he had taken the oaths to king William III., he refused to do so to queen Anne; and, being therefore turned out of his cure, he studied physic, and practised at St. Ives and Bishop's Stortford. He was married, and left three daughters. He published, 1. A Survey of the Roman Antiquities in the Midland counties of England; in 8vo., 1726. 2. A Survey of the Roman Stations in Britain, according to the Roman Itinerary; 8vo., 1728. 3. The History of Hertfordshire, &c., fol., 1728. 4. The Lives of the English Bishops from the Restoration to the Revolution; 1733. 5. The Antiquities of Surrey, &c., 8vo., 1736. 6. The History and Antiquities of Essex, folio. left unfinished at his death, in 1738.

This work was

SALMON (Thomas), an eminent English historian and geographer, younger brother to the Dr. He wrote many useful works, particularly, 1. A Geographical Grammar; 8vo., which went through numberless editions. 2. A History of England. 3. An examination of Bishop Burnet's History of his own times. He died in April

1743.

SALMONE, a town of Peloponnesus, in Elis, with a fountain, forty stadia from Olympia; thence called Salmonis.

SALMONEUS, in fabulous history, a king of Elis, the son of Æolus and Enarete, and brother of Sisyphus. He married Alcidice by whom he had Tyro. Ambitious to be reckoned a god, he imitated thunder and lightning by artificial fireworks. Jupiter therefore struck him with a real thunderbolt, and placed him in hell near his brother Sisyphus.

SALON, a town in the south-east of France, in Provence, department of the mouths of the Rhone. It is situated on a height, on the canal of Capronne, and its trade consists in the produce of the neighbouring country, viz. corn, cattle, wool, olives and silk. Inhabitants 6300. Eighteen miles W.N.W. of Aix, and nineteen east of Arles.

SALONA, a town of Austrian Dalmatia, on a bay of the Adriatic, once a town of importance, having been taken and destroyed in the reign of Augustus, but rebuilt by Tiberius, who sent thither a Roman colony, and made it the capital of Illyricum. This rank it long held; but seems to have declined after the reign of Dioclesian. Two miles north-east of Spalatro.

SALONA, a considerable town of Livadia, near a bay called the gulf of Salona, which is an inlet from the gulf of Corinth. Salona is situated in a fertile and highly cultivated plain, at the foot of mount Parnassus, and is supposed to occupy the site of the ancient Amphissa. The modern town has no fortifications. Its population is estimated at 8000, and its trade is considerable. Salona is the see of a bishop, subject to the archbishop of Athens. Forty-eight miles north-east of Lepanto.

SALONICA anciently called Thessalonica, Hallia, and Therma, a large and handsome city

of Macedon, standing at the northern extremity of a great bay, and on the acclivity of a steep hill, which rises from the bay at its north-east extremity. The circumference of the walls is about five miles, and the fortress has seven towers. The domes and minarets of mosques are seen rising from among the other buildings, environed by cypresses, and giving a general air of splendor to the place. In ancient times this was a comparatively small place, and is indebted for its increase to the advantage of its position. With the country to the north, one of the most fertile districts in Macedon, it communicates by land, or by the river Vardari, the ancient Axius. The articles collected in Salonica, viz. cotton, tobacco, corn, and wool, are exported to different parts of Europe. The Turks never carried on much business here; it is in the hands of Greeks, Jews, and Frank or French, Italian, English, or Dutch merchants, all of whom have consuls here. The population is computed at 70,000.

Salonica has few antiquities, except the propyla of the ancient Hippodrome, the alto relievos on which are represented in a series of beautiful and accurate engravings, in Stuart's Antiquities of Athens. 272 miles west of Constantinople, and 252 E. S. E. of Ragusa. Long. 22° 56′ E., lat. 40° 38′ 7′′ N.

SALONINA, the wife of the emperor Gallienus, eminent for her public and private virtues. She patronised the arts and sciences, and to her Rome was greatly indebted for a short period of prosperity. But her virtues could not preserve her from the murderers of her husband, who assassinated both, A. D. 268.

SALSETTE, an island on the western coast of Hindostan, and province of Aurungabad, formerly separated from Bombay by a strait 200 yards wide, across which, in the year 1805, a causeway was carried. This island is eighteen miles long, by fourteen broad, and is well adapt ed for sugar, cotton, hemp, indigo, &c. ; but it has hitherto been kept in a state of nature, for the purpose of supplying Bombay with wood, charcoal, and sea salt. Salsette is remarkably rich in antiquities, and the remains of reservoirs, with flights of stone steps round them, the ruins of temples, &c. The most remarkable object, however, is the caverns at Kennere, which contain two colossal statues of Boodh. One of these was converted by the Portuguese into a church. In 1773, during a rupture with the Mahrattas, it was occupied by the British troops, and has ever since remained in their possession. Janna is the chief town.

SAL'SIFY, n. s. A plant.

Salsify, or the common sort of goatsbeard, is of a very long oval figure, as if it were cods all over streaked, and engraven in the spaces between the streaks, which are sharp-pointed towards the end.

Mortimer's Husbandry.

The salsoacids help its passing off; as sal prunel. Floyer.

SALSOLA, glass-wort; a genus of the digynia order, and pentandria class of plants, natural order twelfth, holoraceæ: CAL. pentaphyllous: CAPS. monospermous, with a screwed seed. The species are these:—

1. S. kali, growing naturally in the salt marshes in divers parts of England. It is an annual plant, which rises above five or six inches high, sending out many side branches, which spread on every side, garnished with short awl-shaped leaves, which are fleshy, and terminate in acute spines. The flowers are produced from the side of the branches, to which they sit close, and are encompassed by short prickly leaves; they are small, and of an herbaceous color. The seeds are wrapped up in the empalement of the flower, and ripen in autumn; soon after which the plant decays.

2. S. rosacea, growing naturally in Tartary, is an annual plant, whose stalks are herbaceous, and seldom rise more than five or six inches high. The leaves are awl-shaped, ending in acute points; the empalements of the flowers spread open; the flowers are small, and of a rose color, but soon fade; the seeds are like those of the other kinds.

3. S. soda rises with herbaceous stalks, nearly three feet high, spreading wide. The leaves on the principal stalk, and those on the lower part of the branches, are long, slender, and have no spines; those on the upper part of the stalk and branches are slender, short, and crooked. At the base of the leaves are produced the flowers, which are small and hardly perceptible; the empalement of the flower afterwards encompasses the capsule, which contains one cochleated seed. All the sorts of glass-wort are sometimes promiscuously used for making kali, but this species is esteemed best. The manner of making it is as follows:-Having dug a trench near the sea, they place laths across it, on which they lay the herbs in heaps; and, having made a fire below, the liquor which runs out of the herbs drops to the bottom, which at length thickening, becomes kali, which is partly of a black, and partly of an ash color, very sharp and corrosive, and of a saltish taste. This, when thoroughly hardened, becomes like a stone; and in that state is transported to different countries for the making of glass.

4. S. tragus grows naturally on the sandy shores of the south of France, Spain, and Italy. This is also an annual plant, which sends out many diffused stalks, garnished with linear leaves an inch long, ending with sharp spines. The flowers come out from the side of the stalks in the same manner as those of the former; their empalements are blunt, and not so closely encompassed with leaves as those of the other.

5. S. vermiculata grows naturally in Spain. This has shrubby perennial stalks, which rise three or four feet high, sending out many side branches, garnished with fleshy, oval, acute pointed leaves, coming out in clusters from the side of the branches, they are hoary, and have stiff prickles. The flowers are produced from between the leaves toward the end of the

branches; they are so small as scarcely to be discerned unless they are closely viewed. The seeds are like those of the other kinds.

SALT, n. s., adj., & v. a.~
SALT-CAT, n. s.
SALT-CELLAR,

SALTER,

SALTERN,

SALTPETRE.

Saxon reale; Goth., Swed., and Dan. salt; Fr. sel; Lat. sal. A well known combination of an acid with an alkali, earth, or metallic oxide: impregnated with, or abounding in salt. See CHEMISTRY, and below. Taste; smack; relish; wit: to season with salt: a salt-cat is a name for a lump of salt, see below: salt-cellar, the vessel that usually holds the salt: saltern, a salt-pan or work: saltish, saltly, and saltness, correspond: saltpetre (Lat. sal petræ) nitre.

He shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness in a salt land, and not inhabited.

Jer. xvii. 6. Moab and Ammon shall be as the breeding of nettles, salt-pits, and a perpetual desolation.

a man?

Zech. ii. 9. Is not discourse, manhood, learning, gentleness, virtue, and liberality, the spice and salt that seasons Shakspeare. Though we are justices and doctors, and churchmen, Mr. Page, we have some salt of our youth in us; we are the sons of women.

Id. Merry Wives of Windsor. We were better parch in Africk sun, Than in the pride and salt scorn of his eyes.

After these local names, the most have been derived from occupations; as smith, salter, armourer.

Camden's Remains. Some think their wits have been asleep, except they dart out somewhat that is piquant and to the quick; men ought to find the difference between saltness and bitterness. Bacon.

Cicero prettily calls them salinas salt-pans, that you may extract salt out of, and sprinkle where you please. Id. It hath been observed by the ancients, that salt water will dissolve salt put into it in less time than

fresh water.

Id.

Nitre, or saltpetre, having a crude and windy spirit, by the heat of the fire suddenly dilateth. Id. If the offering was of flesh, it was salted thrice. Browne.

Since salts differ much, some being fixt, some volatile, some acid, and some urinous, the two qualities wherein they agree are, that it is easily dissoluble in water, and affects the palate with a sapour good or evil. Boyle.

Nitre or saltpetre, in heaps of earth, has been extracted, if they be exposed to the air, so as to be kept from rain. Locke.

Soils of a saltish nature improve sandy ground. Mortimer.

In Cheshire they improve their lands by letting

A particle of salt may be compared to a chaos, being dense, hard, dry, earthy in the centre, and rare, soft, and moist in the circumference. Newton's Opticks.

The stratum lay at about twenty-five fathoms, by the duke of Somerset's salt-pans near Whitehaven. Woodward on Fossile,

Salts are bodies friable and brittle, in some degree ble in water; but, after that is evaporated, incorpopellucid, sharp or pungent to the taste, and dissolurating, crystallising, and forming themselves into angular figures. Woodward.

When any salt is spilt on the table-cloth, shake it out into the saltcellar.

Swift's Directions to the Butler.

SALT is distinguished by some into three kinds: native or rock salt; common, or sea salt, or white salt; and bay salt.

SALT, BAY. Under the title of bay salt are ranked all kinds of common salt extracted from the water wherein it is dissolved, by means of the sun's heat, and the operation of the air; whether the water from which it is extracted be sea water, or natural brine drawn from wells and springs, or salt water stagnating in ponds and lakes. It does not appear that there is any other thing requisite in the formation of bay salt, than to evaporate the sea water with an exceeding gentle heat; and it is even very probable that our common sea salt by a second solution and crystallisation might attain the requisite degree of purity.

SALT, COMMON, or sea salt, or white salt, the name of that salt extracted from the waters of the ocean, which is used in great quantities for preserving provisions, &c. It is composed of muriatic acid, saturated with soda; and hence, in the new chemical nomenclature, it is called muriate of soda. See CHEMISTRY, Index. It is commonly found in salt water and salt springs, in the proportion of thirty-six per cent. It is found also in coals and in beds of gypsum. Of this most useful commodity there are ample stores on land as well as in the ocean. There

are few countries which do not afford vast quantities of rock or fossil salt. Mines of it have

long been discovered and wrought in England, Spain, Italy, Germany, Hungary, Poland, and other countries of Europe. In several parts of the world there are huge mountains which wholly consist of fossil salt. Of this kind are two mountains in Russia, near Astracan; several in the kingdoms of Tunis and Algiers, in Africa ; and several also in Asia; and the whole island of Ormus in the Persian gulf almost entirely consists of fossil salt. The new world is likewise stored with treasures of this useful mineral, as well as with all other kinds of subterranean productions. The sea affords such vast plenty of common salt, that all mankind might thence be supplied with quantities sufficient for their occasions. There are also innumerable springs,