54 PROF. EDWAED HULL, LL.D., F.E.S., F.G.S., ON 



ocean in streams charged with a fresh supply of the salts and 

 carbonates it had left behind in the ocean.* The consequence 

 of this process must clearly be tliat the saline ingredients have 

 been increasing in the oceanic waters from the earliest periods 

 down to the present day. As regards the carbonates of 

 lime and magnesia, and the silica which are being carried 

 into the ocean by the rivers, Ave have no difficulty in 

 accounting for their uses. Of these materials, the shells and 

 skeletons of the molluscs, echinoderms, reef-building corals, 

 foraminifera, sponges, radiolarians and diatoms and other 

 forms are built up, and as these structures are continually 

 being formed, and the materials solidified as fast as they 

 enter the oceans, there is no reason why they should 

 augment. Hence the proportion of carbonates of lime and 

 magnesia in the ocean waters may be very much the same 

 now as it was in Silurian and Carboniferous times. 



22 We are thus brought to the conclusion that the saltness 

 of the sea may have originated in very much the same 

 ■way as has that of the Dead Sea, Lake Oroomiah, or 

 the Great Salt Lake of Utah, or many others which might 

 be named, and which possess in common the characteristic 

 of having no outlet. When the great envelope of vapour 

 which surrounded the incandescent globe began to condense 

 upon its cooling surface, the resulting waters, though con- 

 taining, as Dr. Sterry Hunt supposes, acid gases, were 

 destitute of saline ingredients. The process of salinifica- 

 tion began with the first streams Avhich entered the seas 

 from the bordering uplands, and this process carried ou 

 throughout the long ages preceding the Silurian period 

 brought the Avaters to a condition suited to sustain the life 

 of forms of inhabitants representative of those A\diich inhabit 

 the ocean at the present day. These long ages may be sup- 

 posed to include, not only the Archa3an and Azoic periods, 

 but that during Avhich the first crust Avas in course of forma- 

 tion over the incandescent globe. 



* This process of evaporation and supply by rivers is accurately des- 

 cribed in the Book of Ecclesiastes i, 7. 



