THE BASIN AND BED OF THE ATLANTIC. 333 



618. T}ie work of re-adaptation^ how carried on. — The waters 

 of the Mississippi and the Amazon, together with all the streams 

 and rivers of the world, both great and small, hold in solution 

 large quantities of lime, soda, iron, and other matter. They 

 discharge annually into the sea an amount of this soluble matter, 

 which, if precipitated and collected into one solid mass, would 

 no doubt surprise and astonish even the boldest speculator with 

 its magnitude. This soluble matter cannot be evaporated. 

 Once in the ocean, there it must remain ; and as the rivers are 

 continually pouring in fresh supplies of it, the sea, it has been 

 argued, must continue to become more and more salt. Now 

 the rivers convey to the sea this solid matter mixed with fresh 

 water, which, being lighter than that of the ocean, remains 

 for a considerable time at or near the surface. Here the micro- 

 scopic organisms of the deep-sea lead are continually at work, 

 secreting this same lime and soda, etc., and extracting from the 

 sea water all this solid matter as fast as the rivers bring it down 

 and empty it into the sea. Thus we haul up from the deep sea, 

 specimens of dead animals, and recognize in them the remains 

 of creatures which, though invisible to the naked eye, have 

 nevertheless assigned to them a most important office in the 

 physical economy of the universe, viz., [that of regulating the 

 saltness of the sea (§ 489). This view suggests many contem- 

 plations. Among them, one, in which the ocean is presented 

 as a vast chemical bath, in which the solid parts of the earth are 

 washed, filtered, and precipitated again as solid matter, but in 

 a new form, and with fresh properties. Doubtless it is only a 

 readaptation — though it ma}" be in an improved form — of old, 

 and perhaps effete matter, to the uses and well-being of man. 

 These are speculations merely ; they may be fancies without 

 foundation, but idle they are not, I am sure ; for when we come 

 to consider the agents by which the physical economy of this 

 our earth is regulated, by which this or that result is brought 

 about and accomplished in this beautiful system of terrestrial 

 arrangements, we are utterly amazed at the offices which have 

 been performed, the work which has been done, by the ani- 

 malculae of the water. But whence come the little silicious 

 and calcareous shells which Brooke's lead has brought up, 

 in proof of its sounding, from the depth of over two miles ? Did 

 they live in the surface waters immediately above ? or is their 

 hahiiat in some remote part of the sea, whence, at their death, 



