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XXXIII. Some experiments and researches on the saline contents 
of sea-water , undertaken with a view to correct and improve its 
chemical analysis. By Alexander Marcet, M. D. F. R. S. 
Honorary Professor of Chemistry at Geneva. 
Read June 27, 1823. 
In a paper on the temperature and saltness of various seas, 
which the Royal Society did me the honour to publish in their 
Transactions for the year 1819, I threw out a conjecture, 
that the sea might contain minute quantities of every sub- 
stance in nature, which is soluble in water. For the ocean 
having communication with every part of the earth through 
the rivers, all of which ultimately pour their waters into it ; 
and soluble substances, even such as are theoretically incom- 
patible with each other, being almost in every instance 
capable of co-existing in solution, provided the quantities be 
very minute, I could see no reason why the ocean should not 
be a general receptacle of all bodies which can be held in 
solution. And although it will appear from the following 
account, that I have been unsuccessful in some of my attempts 
to prove the truth of this conjecture, it may fairly be ascribed 
either to a w r ant of sufficient accuracy in our present methods 
of chemical analysis, or of the requisite degree of skill in the 
operator. 
Some time after the communication to which I have just 
referred, an extraordinary statement was pointed out to me, 
upon the authority of Rouelle, a French chemist of the last 
century, from which it appeared that mercury was contained 
