BVP OTTE SES OLMCAOSE, OF GLACIAL PERIODS. 571 
to dissolve calcareous relics. This view is supported by the par- 
tially dissolved condition in which calcareous fossils are so com- 
monly found in the sediments of practically all the ages. The 
inference, therefore, to be drawn from the character of the sedi- 
ments, and from the partial solution of calcareous fossils, is that 
the ocean, as a whole, has not generally been saturated with 
calcium bicarbonate during its known history. Murray has made 
us aware that at the present time the greatest depths of the 
ocean dissolve calcareous relics so freely as to prevent their 
accumulation. 
6. Inorganic chemical reactions.— Viewed comprehensively 
the sea water consists of such solutions as have been carried 
down from the land in past times, modified by concentration and 
deposition. No important constituent has been totally removed. 
The land and sea waters have therefore the same fundamental 
constitution, but the salts of the former enter the sea in a more 
dilute form and in different proportions from those contained in 
the latter. Aside from organic action, and from exceptional 
inorganic agents such as may arise from submarine volcanic 
action and like incidental sources, essentially all occasion for 
chemical reaction when land waters are added to sea waters, is 
limited to a readjustment of the equilibriums of the common 
constituents of the two commingling waters. Following the 
simple doctrines of the old familiar ‘‘ chemistry of results,’ the 
addition of a dilute solution of salts of the alkalis and alkaline 
earths to amore concentrated but not saturated solution of thesame 
salts would neither occasion precipitation nor the evolution of 
gas, for every acid is mated with a base, and all are much below 
the point of saturation. According to the old interpretation the 
bases of the sea salts are, in the main, mated to stronger acids 
than those of the land waters, and these combinations will not 
be changed on the entrance of the latter. So, also, the small 
amounts of strong acids of the land waters are already mated 
with the strong bases in the main, and largely form the same 
combinations as those of the sea waters. Such interchanges as 
follow involve a double reaction essentially without the freeing 
