THE SALTS OF THE SEA. I53 



partment of God's handiwork, upon the threshold of which man 

 has as yet been permitted to stand, to observe, and to compre- 

 hend. 



293. Nay, having reached this threshold, and taken a survey of 

 the surrounding ocean, we are ready to assert, with all the confi- 

 dence of knowledge, that the sea has a system of circulation for 

 its waters. We rest this assertion upon our faith in the physical 

 adaptations w^ith which the sea is invested. Take, for example, the 

 coral islands, reefs, beds, and atolls with which the Pacific Ocean 

 is studded and garnished. They were built up of materials which 

 a certain kind of insect quarried from the sea water. The cur- 

 rents of the sea ministered to this little insect — they were its hod 

 carriers ; when fresh supplies of solid matter were wanted for the 

 coral rock upon which the foundations of the Polynesian Islands 

 were laid, they brought them ; the obedient currents stood ready 

 with fresh supplies in unfailing streams of sea water from which 

 the solid ingredients had not been secreted. Now, unless the cur- 

 rents of the sea had been employed to carry off from this insect 

 the waters that had been emptied by it of their lime, and to bring 

 to it others charged with more, it is evident the little creature 

 would have perished for want of food long before its task was half 

 completed. But for currents, it would have been impaled in a 

 nook of the very drop of water in which it w^as spawned ; for it 

 would have soon secreted the lime contained in this drop of wa- 

 ter, and then, without the ministering aid of currents to bring it 

 more, it would have perished for the want of food for itself and 

 materials for its edifice ; and thus, but for the benign currents 

 w^hich took this exhausted water away, there we perceive this 

 emptied drop w^ould have remained, not only as the grave of the 

 little architect, but as a monument in attestation of the shocking 

 monstrosity that there had been a failure in the sublime system of 

 terrestrial adaptations — that the sea had not been adapted by its 

 Creator to the well-being of all its inhabitants. Now we do know 

 that its adaptations are suited to all the wants of every one of its 

 inhabitants — to the wants of the coral insect as wtII as to those 

 of the whale. Hence we say we know that the sea has its system 

 of circulation, for it transports materials for the coral rock from 

 one part of the world to another ; its currents receive them from 

 the rivers, and hand them over to the little mason for the struct- 



