THE SALTS OF THE SEA. Igl 



titled to claim for it a respectful consideration at least, until we 

 discover it leading us into some palpable absurdity, or until some 

 other hypothesis be suggested which will account equally as well, 

 but for a greater number of phenomena. Then, as honest search- 

 ers after truth, we should be ready to give up the former, adopt 

 the latter, and hold it until some other better than either of the 

 two be offered. 



495. With this understanding, I venture to offer an hypothesis 

 with regard to the agency of the salts or solid matter of the sea 

 in imparting dynamical force to the waters of the ocean, and to 

 suggest that one of the purposes which, in the grand design, it was 

 probably intended to accomplish by having the sea salt, and not 

 fresh, was to impart to its waters the forces and powers necessary 

 to make their circulation complete. 



496. In the first place we do but conjecture when we say that 

 there is a set of currents in the sea by which its waters are con- 

 veyed from place to place with regularity, certainty, and order. 

 But this conjecture appears to be founded on reason ; for if we 

 take a sample of water which shall fairly represent, in the propor- 

 tion of its constituents, the average water of the Pacific Ocean, 

 and analyze it, and if we do the same by a similar sample from 

 the Atlantic, we shall find the analysis of the one to resemble that 

 of the other as closely as though the two samples had been taken 

 from the same bottle after having been well shaken. How, then, 

 shall we account for this, unless upon the supposition that sea 

 water from one part of the world is, in the process of time, brought 

 into contact and mixed up with sea water from all other parts of 

 the world ? Agents, therefore, it would seem, are at work, which 

 shake up the waters of the sea as though they were in a bottle, 

 and which, in the course of time, mingle those that are in one part 

 of the ocean with those that are in another as thoroughly and com- 

 pletely as it is possible for man to do in a vessel of his own con- 

 struction. 



497. This fact, as to uniformity of components, appears to call 

 for the hypothesis that sea water which to day is in one part of 

 the ocean, will, in the process of time, be found in another part 

 the most remote. It must, therefore, be carried about by cur- 



