264 THE PHYSICAL GEUGliAPHY OF THE SEA. 



son for the conjecture that the sea was salt "in the beginning," 

 when " the waters under heaven were gathered together unto one 

 place," and the dry land first appeared ; for, go back as far as we 

 may in the dim records which young Nature 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 in- 

 form 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 was, as it 

 is now, salt ; for had it not been salt, whence could those creep- 

 ing 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 waters, or those infuso- 

 rial deposits which astound the geologist with their magnitude 

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

 ished, puzzled, and bewildered man in all ages — whence, had not 

 the sea been salt when its metes and bounds were set, could these 

 creatures have obtained solid matter for their edifices and struc- 

 tures. Much of that part of the earth's crust which man stirs 

 up in cultivation, and which 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, namely, 

 preserving the purity of the ocean, and regulating it in the due 

 performance of its great ofiices. 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, fresh beauty and variety 

 to its landscapes. Whence came the salts of the sea originally is 

 a question which perhaps never will be settled satisfactorily to 

 every philosophic mind, but it is sufiicient for the Christian phi- 

 losopher to recollect that the salts of the sea, like its waters and 

 the granite of the hills, are composed of substances which, when 

 reduced to their simple state, are found for the most part to be 

 mere ccaseous or volatile matter of some kind or other. Thus we 



