WHY THE SEA IS SALT. 273* 



the various training colleges which instruct and examine and au- 

 thorize, there are now sundry professional associations. Of a 

 general kind come the Teachers' Guild and the Scottish Educa- 

 tional Institute. Then of more special kinds come the Head Mas- 

 ters [of Public Schools] Conference; the Association of Head 

 Masters of Intermediate Secondary Schools; the Association of 

 Head Mistresses; the College of Preceptors; the Association of 

 Assistant Masters ; the National Union of Teachers. 



So, too, with the appliances for maintaining a general organi- 

 zation of all concerned in education schoolmasters, assistants, 

 colleges, and the various unions above named. This professorial 

 class, like other professorial classes, has journals weekly and 

 monthly, some general and some special, representing its inter- 

 ests, serving for communication among its members, and helping 

 to consolidate it. 



WHY THE SEA IS SALT. 



BY G. W. LITTLEHALES. 



FROM the first chapter of the first book of Moses, called Gene- 

 sis, we learn that, as between water and land, the ocean had 

 the first place in terrestrial existence, for it is there stated that 

 on the third day in the calendar of the creation the waters under 

 the heavens were gathered together and the dry land appeared. 

 Both from a chemical and a geological standpoint it appears that 

 the waters of the ocean were salt from the beginning. Dr. T. S. 

 Hunt, one of the ablest writers on the physical history of the 

 globe, in his chemical and geological essays, referring to that pe- 

 riod when the earth was in a molten state and surrounded by an 

 envelope of gases and of vapor of water, states : " There would 

 be the conversion of all the carbonates, chlorides, and sulphates 

 into silicates, and the separation of carbon, chlorine, and sulphur 

 in the form of acid gases which, with nitrogen, vapor of water, 

 and a probable excess of oxygen, could form the dense primeval 

 atmosphere. The resulting fused mass would contain all the 

 bases as silicates, and must have resembled certain furnace slags 

 or volcanic glasses. The atmosphere, charged with acid gases 

 which surrounded this primitive rock, must have been of great 

 density. Under the pressure of a high barometric column con- 

 densation could take place at a temperature much above the pres- 

 ent boiling point of water, and the depressed portions of the half- 

 cooled crust would be flooded with a highly heated solution of 

 hydrochloric and sulphuric acids, whose action in decomposing 

 the silicates can easily be understood. The formation of the 

 chlorides and sulphates of the various bases, and the separation of 



