THE SALTS OF THE SEA. 251 



the ocean. As the salts are emptied into the sea, these crea- 

 tures secrete them again and pile them up in solid masses, to 

 serve as the bases of islands and continents, to be in the process 

 of ages upheaved into dry land, and then again dissolved by 

 the dews and rains, and w^ashed by the rivers away into the sea 

 again. 



490. The question as to whence the salts of the sea were origi- 

 whcnce does the sea ually dorivcd, of courso has not escaped the atten- 

 derive its salts? i{qj^ of philosophcrs . I oucc tliought with Darwin 

 and those other philosophers who hold that the sea derived its salts 

 originally from the washings of the rains and rivers. I now 

 question that opinion ; for, in the com^se of the researches con- 

 nected with the "Wind and Current Charts," I have found evi- 

 dence, from the sea and in the Bible, which seems to cast doubt 

 upon it. The account given in the first chapter of Genesis, and 

 that contained in the hieroglyphics which are traced by the hand of 

 Kature on the geological column as to the order of creation, are 

 marvellously accordant. The Christian man of science regards 

 them both as true; and he never overlooks the fact that, while 

 they differ in the mode and manner as well as in the things they 

 teach, yet they never conflict ; and they contain no evidence going 

 to show that the sea was ever fresh ; on the contrary, they 

 both afford circumstantial evidence sufficient for the belief that the 

 sea was salt as far back as the morning of creation, or at least as 

 the evening and the morning of the day when the dry land appeared. 

 That the rains and the rivers do dissolve salts of various kinds 

 from the rocks and soil, and empty them into the sea, there is 

 no doubt. These salts cannot be evaporated, we know ; and we 

 also know that many of the lakes, as the Dead Sea, which receive 

 rivers and have no outlet, are salt. Hence the inference by 

 some philosophers that these inland water-basins received their 

 salts wholly from the washings of the soil ; and consequently the 

 conjectm-e arose that the great sea derived its salts from the same 

 som'ce and by the same process. But, and per contra, though 

 these sohd ingredients cannot be taken out of the sea by evapo- 

 ration, they can be extracted by other processes. We know that 

 the insects of the sea do take out a portion of them, and that the 

 salt ponds and arms which, from time to time in the geological 

 calendar, have been separated from the sea, afford an escape by 

 which the quantity of chloride of sodium in its waters — the most 

 abundant of its sohd ingredients — is regulated. The insects of 



