Halite may occur as a sublimate on lava, as at Vesuvius and some other volcanoes, where it is generally associated with potassium chloride; but its usual mode of occurrence is in bedded deposits, often lenticular, and sometimes of great thickness.
Halite or rock-salt crystallizes in the cubic system, usually in cubes, rarely in octahedra; the cubes being solid, unlike the skeleton-cubes obtained by rapid evaporation of brine.
The word halite, however, is sometimes used not only for the species rock-salt but as a group-name to include a series of haloid minerals, of which that species is the type.