200 THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA. 



of heat and cold, of storm and rain, in disturbing the equilibrium, 

 and producing thereby currents in the sea, are compensated, reg- 

 ulated, and controlled. 



562. The dews, the rains, and the rivers are continually dis- 

 solving certain minerals of the earth, and carrying them off to the 

 sea. This is an accumulative process ; and if it were not com- 

 jpensated^ the sea would finally become, as the Dead Sea is, satu- 

 rated with salt, and therefore unsuitable for the habitation of 

 many fish of the sea. 



563. The sea-shells and marine insects afford the required com- 

 joensation. They are the conservators of the ocean. As the 

 salts are emptied into the sea, these creatures 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 washed 

 by the rivers away into the sea. 



564. The question as to whence the salts of the sea were orig- 

 inally derived, of course has not escaped the attention of philoso- 

 phers. 



bQA. I once thought with Darwin and those other philosophers 

 who hold that the sea derived its salts originally from the wash- 

 ings of the rains and rivers. I now question that opinion ; for, 

 in the course of the researches connected with the " Wind and 

 Current Charts," I have found evidence, 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 hieroglyph- 

 ics which are traced by the hand of Nature on the geological col- 

 umn as to the order of creation, are marvelously accordant. The 

 Christian man of science regards them both as true ; and he nev- 

 er overlooks the fact that, wliile they differ in the mode and man- 

 ner 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. 



6Q6. That the rains and the rivers do dissolve salts of various 



