THE SALTS OF THE SEA. 229 



sis, in the present meagre state of absolute knowledge with regard 

 to the subject, seems to be as necessary to progress as is a corner- 

 stone to a building. To make progress mth such investigations, 

 we want something to build upon. In the absence of facts, we 

 are sometimes permitted to suppose them ; only, in supposing 

 them, we should take not only the possible, but the probable ; 

 and in making the selection of the various hypotheses which are 

 suggested, we are bound to prefer that one by which the greatest 

 number of phenomena can be reconciled. When we have found, 

 tried, and offered such a one, we are entitled to claim for it a re- 

 spectful consideration at least, until we discover it leading us into 

 some palpable absTirdity, or until some other hypothesis be sug- 

 gested which will account equally as well, but for a greater num- 

 ber of phenomena. Then, as honest searchers after truth, we 

 should be ready to give up the former, adopt the latter, and hold 

 it until some other better than either of the two bo offered. With 

 this understaading, I venture to offer an hypothesis with regard 

 to the agency of the salts or solid matter of the sea in imparting 

 dynamical force to the waters of the ocean, and to suggest that 

 one of the purposes which, in the grand design, it was probably 

 intended to accomplish by having the sea salt, and not fresh, was 

 to impart to its waters the forces and powers necessary to make 

 their circulation complete. In the first place, we rely mainly upon 

 hypothesis or conjecture for the assertion that there is a set of 

 currents in the sea by which its waters are conveyed from place 

 to place with regularity, certainty, and order. But this conjecture 

 appears to be founded on reason, and we believe it to be true ; 

 for if we take a sample of water which shall fairly represent, in 

 the proportion of its constituents, the average water of the Pacific 

 Ocean, and analyze it, and if we do the same by a similar sample 

 from the Atlantic, we shall find the analysis of the one to resem- 

 ble that of the other as closely as though the two samples had 

 been taken from the same bottle after having been well shaken. 

 How, then, shall we account for this, unless upon the supposition 

 that sea water from one part of the world is, in the process of 

 time, brought in contact and mixed up mth sea water from aU 

 other parts of the world ? Agents, therefore, it would seem, are 

 at work, which shake up the waters of the sea as though they 

 were in a bottle, and which, in the com'se of time, mingle those 

 that are in one part of the ocean with those that are in another as 

 thoroughly and completely as it is possible for a man to do in a 



