604 CY ROS ES TOLNIAW: 
carbonate, and allow perhaps a somewhat greater dissociation of 
the bicarbonate into carbonate. The bicarbonate in the ocean 
is, as shown above, not calcium bicarbonate, but bicarbonate of all | 
the bases in solution, so that Treadwell and Reuter’s investiga- 
tions upon pure calcium bicarbonate in saturated solution cannot be 
taken to prove that the bicarbonates of the unsaturated sea water 
cannot be dissociated. 
‘ As direct evidence that the ocean is not saturated with cal- 
cium acid carbonate, we find (1) of the many hundred bottles 
of the Challenger’s samples of sea water, from all depths and 
collected at all temperatures, kept several years, only one or two 
showed deposit of lime.t (2) Seashells from the bottom of, 
the Pacific show corrosion and resolution.* Pteropod shells and 
foraminifera tests are slowly dissolved as they sink. The 
Pteropod shells are not found below fifteen hundred fathoms, 
and two thousand eight hundred fathoms is the limit for the 
globigerina ooze. (3) Thoulet found by actual experiment 
that sea water will dissolve calcium carbonate from shells, corals, 
etc. (4) Usiglio, studying the evaporation of the Mediterranean 
water at Cette, found that no precipitate was formed until the 
specific gravity of the sea water increased from 1.02, the specific 
gravity of the unevaporated water, to 1.0503 when the first 
precipitation begins, composed largely of calcium carbonate with 
ferric oxide.5 
DEGREE OF BICARBONATE DISSOCIATION. 
From twenty-seven analyses by Jacobson, we find an average 
Of O1.47% per liter of tree CO, and 12072 °CO. inethe monmmal 
carbonate, or the bicarbonate is so dissociated that 25 per cent. 
of its second equivalent of CO, is lacking.® 
THEOCACIt Pz 2. 
2JouR. GEOL., Vol. I, p. 504. 
3 Loe. cit., p. 221. 
4Comptes Rendus, Vol. CVIII, p. 753. 
5Encyl. Brit., Vol. X XI, p. 229. 
®Uber die Luft des Meerwassers Ann. der Chemie und Pharm., Vol. CLXVII 
(1873), pp. 1-38. 
