"licking holes" they contain. It is chiefly to take off that taste for
licking the saline clay, that rock-salt is in such request for sheep,
lumps of it being laid in their pens for this purpose. At all events, it
is certain that by this licking of clay both sheep and cattle are much
injured in health and condition, losing their appetite for grass, and
finally passing clay only, as may be seen near such places. In the salt
plants on these plains, nature has amply provided for this taste of these
large herbivora for salt. Our sheep nibbled at the mesembryanthemum, and
the cattle ate greedily of various bushes whereof the leaf was sensibly
salt to the taste. The colour of the leaves of such bushes is usually a
very light bluish green, and there are many species. That with the
largest leaves, called salt-bush by stockmen, and by Dr. Brown RHAGODIA
PARABOLICA, was very useful as a vegetable after extracting the salt
sufficiently from it. This we accidentally discovered from some
experiments made by Mr. Stephenson, for the purpose of ascertaining the
proportion of salt contained in the leaves. The leaves contained as much
as a twentieth part of salt, nearly two ounces having been obtained from
two pounds of the leaves.[*] We also found that after twice boiling the
leaves a few minutes in water to extract the salt, and then an hour in a
third water, the leaves formed a tender and palatable vegetable, somewhat
resembling spinach. As the superior excellence of these runs for
fattening cattle is admitted on all hands, as compared with others more
abundant in grass on the eastern side of the great range, would it not be
advisable for the colonists to cultivate this salt-supplying bush, and
thereby to produce a vegetable substitute for the rock salt, which is not
only expensive, but only a very imperfect remedy for the clay-licking
propensities of sheep and cattle on many runs? Thermometer at sunrise,
70°; at noon, 94°; at 4 P.M., 98°; at 9, 86°;--with wet bulb, 75°.

[* The process of Mr. Stephenson was as follows:--"Two pounds of the