PROPERTIES AND CONSTITUTION OF SEA-WATER. 529 



the society as a basis for the use of the membership in the arrange- 

 ment of their beneficial system. As this table has never, so far as I 

 know, been published outside the society's own journals, I submit it 

 here, with the expectation of life, according to the American tables : 



PROPERTIES AND CONSTITUTIO:^' OF SEA -WATER. 



By M, ANTOINE DE SAPOETA. 



IT has been said that, without the sea, civilization could not have 

 been developed, and the world would have continued barbarous. 

 That element, from the primitive times of mankind, has brought to- 

 gether the peoples of the most distant countries, and inspired the an- 

 cients with the idea of the Infinite. Homer believed in a river 

 Oceanus ; the Hindoo mythologians in a liquid expanse, boundless as 

 space. The fishermen who set their rude nets in the creeks of the 

 Cyclades were, perhaps, the first naturalists, and the Phoenician sailors 

 may have been the first marine engineers. In our own time, all the 

 sciences find in the ocean either a limitless field of exploration, or an 

 enemy to be conquered. Zoologists, closeted in their laboratories, en- 

 deavor to determine the beings which the dredge has brought up from 

 frightful depths, while hydrographers and constructors study the 

 currents, raise jetties, and excavate ports. The public visit the aqua- 

 riums, admire the dikes and excavations, and applaud what they see, 

 but do not see all. Our purpose is to explain the researches of the 



TOL. XXTI. — 34 



