THE SALTS OF THE SEA. 257 



-square miles. These millions of cubic miles of crystal salt have not 

 made the sea any fuller. All this solid matter has been received 

 into the interstices of sea water without swelling the mass ; for 

 chemists tell us that water is not increased in volume by the salt it 

 dissolves. Here we have therefore displayed before us an economy 

 of si[)s.ce calculated to surprise even the learned author himself of 

 the " Plm-ahty of Worlds." 



496. There has been another question raised which bears upon 

 Tb?saitness of water what has already been said concerning the offices 

 retards evaporatiou. -^yJiich, in the sublimc systcm of terrestrial arrange- 

 ments, have been assigned to the salts of the sea. On the 20th of 

 January, 1855, Professor Chapman, of the University College, To- 

 ronto, communicated to the Canadian Institute a paper on the 

 " Object of the salt condition of the sea," which, he maintains, is 

 ^'mainly intended to regulate evaporation.'' To establish this 

 hy})othesis, he shows by a simple but carefully conducted set of 

 experiments that, the Salter the water, the slower the evaporation 

 fi'om it ; and that the evaporation which takes place in 24 hom^s 

 from water about as salt as the average of sea water is 0.54 per 

 cent, less in quantity than from fresh water. " This suggestion 

 tind these experiments give additional interest to om- investigations 

 into the manifold and marvellous offices which, in the economy of 

 our planet, have been assigned by the Creator to the salts of the sea. 

 It is difficult to say what, in the Divine arrangement, was the main 

 object of making the sea salt and not fi'esh. Whether it was to 

 assist in the regulation of climates, or in the circulation of the ocean, 

 or in re-adapting the earth for new conditions by transferring 

 solid portions of its crust from one part to another, and giving 

 emj)loyment to the corallines and insects of the sea in collecting 

 this solid matter into new forms, and presenting it under different 

 climates and conditions, or whether the main object was, as the 

 distinguished professor suggests, to regulate evaporation, it is not 

 necessary now or here to discuss. I think we may regard all the 

 objects of the salts of the sea as main objects. But we see in the 

 professor's experiments the dawn of more new beauties, and the 

 appearance of other exquisite compensations, which, in studying 

 the ' wonders of the deep,' we have so often paused to contemplate 

 and admire : — As the trade-wind region feeds the air with the 

 vapour of fresh water, the process of evaporation fi'om the sea is 

 checked, for the water which remains, being Salter, parts with its 

 vapour less readily ; and thus, by the salts of the sea, floods may be 



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