364 CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON. 



sodium carried down by the streams seems to be greatly overstraining the 

 evidence. Besides, recent investigations do not fully support the earlier 

 views of a large prevalent chlorine content in the volcanic gases. 1 



In addition to these and other concrete difficulties connected with the 

 inherited interpretation, the theory on which it is based is itself unsatisfactory. 

 Under modern chemico-physical views mass action, degrees of concentration, 

 influences of ingredients on one another, the laws of equilibrium, etc., play 

 large parts in the interaction of the mingled constituents at all stages of the 

 complicated processes of disintegration and solution on land, of separation and 

 mixture in transit to sea, and of recommingling in the ocean. Theoretically, 

 each individual constituent should play its own part in its own way and at its 

 own rate and proportion at all stages of its history, dependent merely on its 

 own contacts and instantaneous conditions. Theory recognizes no exception. 



Besides, looking at the problem from the larger historical point of view, the 

 kinetic laws of molecular action and the limitations of the earth's power of 

 gravitative control imply that the accumulation of the ocean must have been 

 more prolonged than has been assumed in the inherited view. If so, it is 

 almost inevitable that the internal reactions were proportionately more import- 

 ant than they have commonly been thought to be. An attempt was therefore 

 made to find the source of the seeming discrepancy between the oceanic 

 chlorine and sodium in accordance with revised chemico-physical as well as 

 geo-cosmological tenets. The line of effort was a rescrutiny of the natural 

 processes of decomposition, transport, and recombinaton, to see if some 

 systematic return of the sodium of the ocean to the solid state in the ocean 

 sediments had not been overlooked or too lightly emphasized, for it is obvious 

 that if sodium thus returns in sufficient proportions, the apparent discrepancy 

 disappears. 



In following the course of sodium and its associated elements, from the 

 rocks to the soils and soil waters, from these to the streams, through the 

 streams to the ocean, and through the recombinations that attend the mingling 

 of the fresh waters with the salt waters of the ocean, it appeared (1) that the 

 sodium was separated from the acid radicals with which it had been united 

 in the rocks and soils more freely than was the potassium, calcium, and mag- 

 nesium, as has long been recognized and emphasized; (2) that the basic 

 radicals so formed were carried to the ocean as true solutions and were the 

 chief elements analyzed, and so constitute the contribution to the salts of the 

 ocean chiefly taken into account in studies on the subject; but (3) that, in 

 consequence, the acid radicals were concentrated in the surface soils and formed 

 their largest portion, until (4) later they were also carried, chiefly at flood 

 stages, to the ocean, not as true solutions but as colloids or as silts, clays, 

 and sands, and (5) that on entering the sea these acid radicals came again into 

 contact with basic radicals of the same sorts as those with which they had been 

 united in the rocks and soils. But (6) the basic radicals had been separated 

 from the acid radicals under conditions of very low concentration because of the 

 abundant meteoric waters that passed through the soils; while in the ocean, 

 on the other hand, (7) they were in a much more concentrated state. Under 

 these new ratios of concentration, (8) the acid radicals reunited with the basic 



1 W. T. Allen, Chemicnl aspects of vulcanism with a collection of the analyses of volcanic 

 gases, Papers from the Geophysical Laboratory, Carnegie Inst. Wash. Pub. No. 440 (1922). 



