§ 495. THE SALTS OF THE SEA. 265 



say that granite is generally composed of feldspar, mica, and 

 quartz, yet these three minerals are made of substances more or 

 less volatile in combination with oxygen gas. Iron, of which there 

 is merely a trace, is the only ingredient which, in its uncombined 

 and simple state, is not gaseous or volatile. Now was the feld- 

 spar of the granite originally formed in one heap, the mica in 

 another, and the quartz in a third, and then the three brought to- 

 gether by some mighty power, and welded into the granite rock 

 for the everlasting hills to stand upon? or were they, as they 

 were formed of the chaotic matter, made into rock ? Sea water is 

 composed of oxygen and hydrogen, and its salts, like the granite, 

 also consist of gases and volatile metals. But whether the constit- 

 uents of sea water, like those of the primitive rocks, were brought 

 together in the original process of formation, and united in com- 

 bination as we now find them in the ocean, or whether the sea 

 was fresh '4n the beginning," and became salt by some subse- 

 quent process, is not material to our present purpose. Some ge- 

 ologists suppose that in the chalk period, when the ammonites, 

 with their huge chambered shells, lived in the sea, the carbona- 

 ceous material required by these creatures for their habitations 

 must have been more abundant in its waters than it now is ; but, 

 though the constituents of sea water may have varied as to pro- 

 portions, they probably were never, at least since "its waters 

 commenced to bring forth," widely different from what they now 

 are. It is true, the strange cuttle-lish, with its shell twelve feet 

 in circumference, is no longer found alive in the sea : it died out 

 with the chalk period ; but then its companion, the tiny nautilus, 

 remains to tell us that even in that remote period the proportion 

 of salt in sea water was not unsuited to its health, for it and the 

 coral insect have lived through all the changes that our planet 

 lias undergone since the sea was^inhabited, and they tell us that 

 its waters were salt as far back, at least, as their records extend, 

 for they now build their edifices and make their habitations of 

 the same materials, collected in the same way that they did then, 

 and, had the sea been fresh in the interim, they too would have 

 perished, and their family would have become extinct, like that 

 of the great ammonite, which perhaps ceased to find the climates 

 of the sea, not the proportion of its salts, suited to its well-being. 

 495. Did any one who maintains that the salts of the sea were 



