HALF AN HOUK WITH THE WAVES. 15 



burning surface for the first time, the waters became 

 charged with all the soluble substances, which were 

 reunited and afterwards deposited, accumulating in 

 the large depressions of the soil. The seas of the 

 primitive globe were thus formed of rain-water, 

 holding in solution all that the earth had given up, 

 collected in large basins chloride of sodium, sul- 

 phates of soda, magnesia, potassium, lime, and sili- 

 cium, in the form of soluble silicate ; in a word, every 

 soluble matter that the primitive globe contained 

 formed part of the mineral contingent of this water. 

 If we reflect that through all time up to the present 

 day none of the general laws of nature have 

 changed if we consider that the soluble substances 

 contained in the water of the primitive seas have 

 remained there, and that the fresh water of the 

 rivers constantly replaces the water which disap- 

 pears by evaporation we have the true explanation 

 of the saltness of the sea-water." This theory may 

 seem ingenious, but it has undoubted good reasons 

 for its support, and some of our best geological 

 chemists are in favour of its being the only one 

 that sufficiently accounts for the sea becoming and 

 remaining salt. As far back as the Devonian period 

 we have evidences of marine and fresh water action, 

 relatively, in the organic remains of the rocks of 

 that age showing that salt water existed then as 

 now, and was equally fit for the support of animal 

 life. Farther back still, in the Cambrian epoch, we 

 have evidences of tidal action in the ripple marks 



