THE CHEMICAL EVOLUTION OF THE OCEAN^ 



ALFRED C. LANE 



The paper was suggested by the chemical character of the deeper 

 mineral waters of Keweenaw Point. The fundamental ideas were 

 stated years ago, by T. Sterry Hunt, who called attention to the 

 fact that in the Canadian Paleozoics there is less sodium in propor- 

 tion to the chlorine than in the present ocean. The same fact is 

 true of the deeper waters, both in upper and lower Michigan. Not 

 only so, but taking the lowest sodium chlorine ratio, which generally 

 comes from the deepest, or one of the deepest, wells found in any 

 water of a given geological horizon, it appears that the older this 

 formation, the lower the ratio. The ratio of sodium to chlorine 

 varies from 0.468 at Big Rapids, to 0.084 iiear the bottom of the 

 Tamarack Mine. 



TABLE I 

 Sodium: Chlorine Ratio in Michigan Deep Waters 



The last two columns give the age in fractions of a hundred million years, sup- 

 posing that none or all of the sodium chloride in the rivers is cyclical. 



I Abstract of paper read at the Ottawa meeting of the Geological Society of 

 America, December, 1905. 



