THE GEOLOGIST 



JULY, 1860. 



THE GEOLOGY OF THE SEA. 



By S. J. Mackii], F.G.S., F.S.A. 



No man is right at all times, says the common proverb, and Geologists 

 are not always exceptions to the rule. Granite has been looked 

 upon as the " back-bone" of the earth's crust, and fire or deeply- 

 seatef-: internal heat has been supposed to have fased an ancient 

 unknown kind of rock into its present compact and crystalHiie state, 

 while although now scarcely anything more than, at most, hot water 

 will be allowed as an agent in the structural change. The older 

 geologists invoked on all occasions when great effects were to be 

 produced most terrible commotions and catastrophes, just as melo- 

 dramatists bring in blue fire and demons. Nature is, however, a 

 most methodical business personage. Sedate and steady, she takes 

 quietly and methodically everything with which she has to do, and 

 keeps her accounts properly by double entry. If you draw on her 

 on the one hand, immediately she pays into her bankers on the other. 

 Nothing goes down on the one side of her accounts but instantly she 

 makes some entry on the other. 



If the sea now-a-days is salt, depend upon it " Old Ocean" is 

 charged for that material somewhere in Dame Nature's ledger. 



This, perhaps, is a humorous way of getting at a curious question. 

 I have been asked it more than once, and being asked has often set 

 me thinking — 



Was the sea always salt ? 



VOL. III. 2 H 



