THE GEOLOGIST 
JULY, 1860. 
THE GEOLOGY OF THE SEA. 
By S. J. Mackie, 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- 
seated internal heat has been supposed to have fo.sed an ancient 
unknown kind of rock into its present compact and crystalline 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 
