I902-3-] The Pal/eochemistrv of the Ocean. 561 



their appearance in the ocean when the gradual elimination of the 

 magnesium, and particularly of the potassium and calcium, began. The 

 forms were in all probability unicellular, and as the period must have 

 been of great duration, the organisms and their protoplasm acquired a 

 fixed relation to the four elements. 



5. With the appearance of vegetable land forms and the formation 

 of soils the removal of potassium from the land to the sea by river 

 water diminished, and this, in conjunction with the elimination of the 

 element from sea water by organisms, made the amount in the sea 

 stationary. Through the action of living forms the calcium also in sea 

 water has been kept stationary since that remote period. 



6. In the transition from the ocean of the more ancient composi- 

 tion to that of the present, the unicellular forms became multicellular, 

 and developed circulatory systems, the vascular fluids of which were 

 at first simply modified sea water. In the blood plasma of Vertebrates, 

 the three elements, sodium, potassium, and calcium are in relative pro- 

 portions strikingly like those which now obtain in sea water. The 

 magnesium only is considerably less than it is in sea water. The whole 

 is due to heredity, the proportions of the saline constituents of the 

 plasma being a reproduction of the proportions which obtained in sea 

 water when circulatory plasmata were developed. 



7. The proportions of the four elements which obtain in living proto- 

 plasm are as yet unknown, for the latter has the power of precipitating the 

 potassium, calcium and probably the sodium and magnesium as ipert 

 compounds in itself or in its adventitious structures, and thus analyses 

 would comprehend the inert material as well as the quantities of these 

 elements which are actively participating in the processes of the living 

 substance. If we could determine the latter quantities alone we could 

 regard them as a representation of the proportions obtaining in prime- 

 val sea water to which the protoplasm of unicellular organisms had 

 established a fixed relation. 



8. That such a relation could be inherited may be inferred from the 

 fact that the karyokinetic process, being practically the same in the 

 animal and vegetable cell, has continued unchanged in both from the 

 primeval period when the karyokinetic process first developed in a 

 parent unicellular organism neither distinctly animal nor distinctly 

 vegetable. This indicates how marked an influence heredity wields. 



9. Briefly, animal as well as vegetable protoplasm owes its relations 



