THE SALTS OF THE SEA. 
169 
the tendency of the instrument to change its performance with the 
changing influences of temperature. 
This contrivance is called a compensation ; and a chronometer 
that is well regulated and properly compensated will perform its 
office with certainty, and preserve its rate under all the vicissi- 
tudes of heat and cold to which it may be exposed. 
340. In the clock-work of the ocean and the machinery of the 
universe, order and regularity are maintained by a system of com- 
pensations. A celestial body, as it revolves around its sun, flies 
off under the influence of centrifugal force ; but immediately the 
forces of compensation begin to act ; the planet is brought back 
to its elliptical path, and held in the orbit for which its mass, 
its motions, and its distance were adjusted. Its compensation is 
perfect. 
341. So, too, with the salts and the shells of the sea in the ma- 
chinery of the ocean ; from them are derived principles of com- 
pensation the most perfect ; through their agency the undue ef- 
fects of heat and cold, of storm and rain, in disturbing the equi- 
librium, and producing thereby currents in the sea, are compen- 
sated, regulated, and controlled. 
• ' 342. The dews, the rains, and the rivers are continually dis- 
solving certain minerals of the earth, and carrying them off to the 
sea. This is an accumulating process ; and if it were not com- 
pensated, the sea would finally become as the Dead Sea is, sat- 
urated with salt, and therefore unsuitable for the habitation of 
many fish of the sea. 
The sea-shells and marine insects afford the required compensa- 
tion. They are the conservators of the ocean. As the salts are 
emptied into the sea, these creatures secrete them again and pile 
them up in solid masses, to serve as the bases of islands and con- 
tinents, to be in the process of ages upheaved into dry land, and 
then again dissolved by the dews and rains, and washed by the 
rivers away into the sea. 
343. Darwin, many years ago, during one of those moments of 
inspiration which enabled him to foreshadow the steam-boat and 
the locomotive, told philosophers whence came the salts of the 
sea. 
" Gnomes ! You then taught transuding dews to pass 
Through time-fall'n woods and root-inwove morass 
