Lake Bonneville PDF Download

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1890 edition. Excerpt: ...new lake was almost as fresh as the streams. It had the property of throwing down suspended clay with great rapidity, so that the greater part of the mud brought to it by the streams was deposited near the shore, and chemical and organic precipitates acquired relative importance in the center of the basin. It is proper to add that the process of burial by desiccation, here invoked to account for the disappearance of saline matter, is not hypothetic, WATER FRESHENED BY DESICCATION. 209 except as regards the particular application. It has been fully demonstrated, especially by the investigations of Russell,1 that it is an actual process, all stages of which are exhibited in the modern history of the small basins of Utah and Nevada. Not only are soluble salts found mingled with the earths of the playas in all proportions, but crystalline layers have been discovered beneath earthy playa deposits; and there are numerous modern lakes of feeble salinity occupying closed basins whose upper slopes are covered by saliferous lacustrine deposits of earlier origin, and whose salts have never been discharged by means of a lake outlet. It is an essential part of the hypothesis that the lake was evaporated to dryness after the deposition of the Yellow ('lay; and the establishment of the hypothesis would demonstrate an element of the curve of oscillation for which there is no other evidence. ORGANIC REMAINS. The fossil remains yielded most abundantly by the Bonneville beds are tests of fresh-water univalve mollusks. These are found at all horizons in the lacustrine deposits, and are likewise imbedded in the tufa. They are best preserved in the White Marl, and are especially abundant at the base and the summit of that member. The specimens preserved in the...