of sea waters, in different parts of the ocean, &c. 191 
§ II. On the Saline contents of the Waters of different Seas. 
I confined my remarks, in the first part of this paper, to 
the subject of the specific gravity and temperature of sea 
water, in various seas and in different latitudes. It remains 
for me to offer a few observations on the saline contents of 
these waters. 
An accurate analysis of all the specimens which I have 
noticed in this paper would have been a most laborious, and 
indeed almost interminable undertaking, which would not 
have afforded any adequate object of curiosity or interest. 
All that I aimed at, therefore, was to operate upon a few 
1 
of the specimens, so selected as to afford a general compa- 
rison between the waters of the ocean in distant latitudes and 
in both hemispheres, and to enable me also to ascertain 
whether particular seas differed materially in the composition 
of their waters. 
For this purpose, availing myself of the experience I had 
obtained, in former inquiries of this kind,* respecting the 
supposed that the colder and heavier strata would form sub-marine currents, con- 
stantly moving from the vicinity of the poles towards the equator, and occasioning 
upper and warmer currents precisely in an opposite direction. It is obvious that 
this theory, though capable of explaining some of the phenomena above mentioned, 
cannot apply to those of an opposite nature, also related in this paper. Yet these may 
possibly depend upon peculiar and local causes ; and I cannot omit to observe, that 
M. De Humboldt, in the work already quoted, entertains notions of an exchange 
constantly going forward between the waters of the Polar regions and those of the 
Equatorial seas, which bear considerable analogy to those of Count Rum ford, and 
cannot fail to give them additional weight. 
* See an ‘Analysis of the Brighton Chalybeate,’ published in Dr. Saunders’s Trea- 
tise on Mineral Waters, 1805. Also * An Analysis of the Waters of the Dead Sea and 
