THE SALTS OF THE SEA. 255 



Yy^hen " tlie 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 om- 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 astonished, 

 puzzled, and bewildered man ui all ages — whence, had not the sea 

 been salt when its metes and bomids were set, could these creatures 

 have obtained solid matter for their edifices and structures ? 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, preservmg the purity of the 

 ocean, and regulating it in the due performance of its great offices. 

 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 sufficient 

 for the Christian philosopher to recollect that the salts of the sea, 

 like its waters and the granite of the hills, are composed of sub- 

 stances which when reduced to their simple state, are fomid for the 

 most part to be mere gaseous or volatile matter of some kind or 

 other. Thus we 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 Avith oxygen gas. Iron, of 

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



