SALTNESS OP THE SEA. 95 



and when this appears to take place in small 

 portions of water of either kind, it is the effect 

 of the decomposition of innumerable animalculse 

 and minute vegetable substances which multiply 

 and perish in succession, and is not caused by 

 any organic change in the constituents of the fluid 

 itself. But the putrescent condition thus arising 

 is fully provided against in large bodies of water 

 by the relative proportions of vegetable and animal 

 life, a provision which evinces, like innumerable 

 other adaptations of creative power, the most mar- 

 vellous wisdom and unerring skill and foresight. 



If we were thoroughly conversant with all the 

 complicated processes which take place in the 

 system of nature, we should be able doubtless 

 to perceive a variety of reasons rendering it 

 necessary that the waters of the sea should be 

 salt, and not fresh. But, so far as our present 

 knowledge enables us to judge, the sea must 

 have been salt from the earliest period of its 

 creation, when it was inhabited by those crea- 

 tures whose fossil remains occur in the most 

 ancient strata, and where there was little or no 

 dry land, and therefore neither rivers nor lakes. 

 And this saltness of the sea, as originally consti- 

 tuted, was requisite to the system of circulation 

 which modern investigations have proved to be 

 constantly carried on with a degree of regularity 

 and completeness as wonderful and admirable as the 

 circulation of the blood in the body of an animal. 



The currents of the ocean, or its system of 

 circulation, and the saltness of its waters are 



