280 APPETs'DlX. 



ture has left inscribed upon the geological column of her early 

 processes, and there we find the fossil shell and the remains of 

 marine organisms to inform us that when the foundations of our 

 mountains were laid with granite, and immediately succeeding 

 that remote period when the primary formations were completed, 

 the sea w^as, as it is now, salt ; for had it not been salt, whence 

 could those creeping things which fashioned the sea-shells that 

 cover the tops of the Andes, or those madrepores that strew the 

 earth with solid matter that has been secreted from briny w^aters, 

 or those infusorial deposits w^hich astound the geologist with their 

 magnitude and extent, or those fossil remains of the sea which have 

 astonished, puzzled, and bewildered man in all ages — whence, had 

 not the sea been salt when its metes and bounds w^ere set, could 

 these creatures have obtained solid matter for their edifices and 

 structures ? Much of that part of the earth's crust which man 

 stirs up in cultivation, and wdiich yields him bread, has been made 

 fruitful by these "salts," which all manner of marine insects, 

 aqueous organisms, and sea-shells have secreted from the ocean. 

 Much of this portion of our planet has been filtered through the 

 sea, and its insects and creeping things are doing now precisely 

 what they were set about when the dry land appeared, viz., pre- 

 serving the purity of the ocean, and regulating it in the due per- 

 formance of its great offices. As fast as the rains dissolve the 

 salts of the earth, and send them down through the rivers to the 

 sea, these faithful and everlasting agents of the Creator elaborate 

 them into pearls, shells, corals, and precious things ; and so, while 

 they are preserving the sea, they are also embellishing the land 

 by imparting new adaptations to its soil, beauty and variety to its 

 landscapes. 



G.— Page 170, «^ 344. 

 FURTHER OBJECTS OF THE SALTS IN THE SEA. 



" There has been another question raised which bears upon 

 what has already been said concerning the offices which, in the 

 sublime system of terrestrial arrangements, have been assigned to 

 the salts of the sea. 



" On the 20th of January last. Professor Chapman, of the Uni- 

 versity College, Toronto, communicated to the Canadian Insti- 

 tute a paper on the ' Object of the Salt Condition of the Sea,' 

 which, he maintains, is ''mainly intended to regulate evapora- 

 tion.'' To establish this hypothesis, he shows by a simple but 

 carefully conducted set of experiments, that the Salter the w^ater, 

 the slower the evaporation from it ; and that the evaporation which 

 takes place in 24 hours from water about as salt as the average of 

 sea water, is 0.54 per cent, less in quantity than from fresh water. 



