12 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OF [1897, 



THE PRIMEVAL OCEAN. 

 BY CHARLES MORRIS. 



In dealing with the conditions of the remote past it is impossible 

 to avoid hypothesis, since exact knowledge is not within our reach. 

 The best that can be done is to support hypothesis, as far as possi- 

 ble, with facts drawn from experimental science. It is only in this 

 way that we can deal with the problem of the Primeval Ocean, by 

 seeking evidence for speculative conception in existing facts. The 

 views which are entertained, for instance, concerning the former 

 greatly heated condition of the earth, which must largely affect any 

 hypothesis concerning the ocean, are mainly speculative. Yet there 

 are so many facts to sustain them that they are generally accepted 

 as well founded ; and if we accept the view that the earth has 

 gradually cooled to its present state from a former greatly heated 

 or vaporized condition, certain conclusions concerning the former 

 state of the ocean and atmosphere become inevitable. 



At one time, under such circumstances, there could have been no 

 ocean, since all the water of the earth must have existed as atmos- 

 pheric vapor. Still more remotely, perhaps, no water existed, the 

 temperature being too high for that combination of oxygen and hy- 

 drogen to which it is due. Such a condition probably exists now in 

 the solar spheres, whose atmospheres contain an abundance of free 

 hydrogen. 



As regards the oceanic and atmospheric conditions of an earth 

 chemically like the one we inhabit, but differing from it greatly in 

 temperature, there are certain conclusions which appear inevitable. 

 If, for example, the surface of the earth should become so heated as 

 to raise the oceanic waters to the temperature of 212° F., that is, to 

 the boiling point under present atmospheric pressure, there would 

 result a very considerable evaporation of the waters of the ocean, 

 but by no means a total one. In fact, the great bulk of the ocean 

 would l'emain in its bed, since the pressure of the atmosphere would 

 be much enhanced by its increase of aqueous vapor, and the boiling 

 point of water be correspondingly raised. Therefore, during the 

 ancient cooling of the earth, the aqueous vapor of the atmosphere 

 must have begun to condense into water long before the temperature 



