548 Transactions of the Canadian Institute. [Vol. VIL 



as is certainly the case with the Stassfurt beds, the result of the evapor- 

 ation of land-locked arms of the sea.* and they are constituted of but an 

 infinitesimal fraction of what is contained in the ocean. Sodium chloride,, 

 like other constituents of sea water, is carried landward with evapora- 

 tion and rain clouds, but it appears to be returned to the ocean, without 

 any perceptible loss, through the river discharge. The only method of 

 elimination which at all possibly counts is that in which it is imprisoned 

 mechanically in the sedimentary deposits during their formation. . That 

 sodium chloride is removed in this way has been pointed out and em- 

 phasized by Osmond Fisher, but there are no data which serve to indi- 

 cate that this is a considerable factor in diminishing the sodium content 

 of the ocean. All the known facts point in the contrary direction. 

 There is no mineral in the course of formation, which is extensive or 

 abundant in its distribution and which also requires considerable 

 quantities of sodium for its production, and there are, further, no 

 agencies acting in the soils which serve to remove sodium compounds 

 from the percolating water. 



In these considerations we find a full explanation for the relative 

 proportions (lOO : 3.613) of the sodium and potassium which now obtain 

 in sea water, and also for those which obtain in the river discharge of the 

 globe. According to Murray's estimate for nineteen principal rivers, the 

 proportions would be lOO : 38.6. We may postulate from this that in the 

 early geological periods of the pre-Cambrian period, when soils did not 

 exist, the quantities of each element discharged by rivers or bodies of 

 water derived from the land surface, were nearly equal. Since the 

 primeval ocean, as pointed out above, contained these elements in almost 

 equal quantities, this condition must have continued until long after soils 

 holding organisms and organic matter had appeared, and even for an 

 indeterminable period after organisms had made the ocean their 

 habitat. The change in the relative proportions once begun must have 

 gone on with extreme slowness, and oceanic organisms, at first wholly of 

 the unicellular kind, must have, after acquiring a relation to these 

 elements, just as slowly responded to the changes in the proportions of 

 their medium. 



The river discharge of the globe has been from primeval times add- 

 ing also magnesium and calcium to the sea. According to calculations 

 based on Murray's data, the proportions relative to the sodium shown in 

 these are 134 and 591 respectively to every 100 of the latter. This is, 

 of course, based on approximate estimations, and they may be incorrect, 



* See G. P. Merrill's "Treatise on Rock and Rock Weathering and Soils," p. 120, 1897. 



