241 
The Ionic Phase of the Sea. 
The general facts of the ionic relations of sea-water are 
accepted from the work of physical chemists; and with their 
methods of arriving at such conclusions the botanist has little to do ; 
he has to fit his ideas to suit these new conceptions, and try to see 
to what they tend in the study of the plant-life of the sea. The 
standpoint that protoplasm is “ non-molecular,” in the sense that 
“life” implies a continuous sequence of physical and chemical 
reactions, in which all molecules are so far “ dead ” end-products 
—and that it may be regarded as comparable, for example, with a 
flame “ burning” at 300° A—is now extended by the view that quite 
a large proportion of sea-water (the primary source of “life”) is 
also non-molecular, consisting of free “ ions,” which may be 
visualized as in a perpetual state of combination and dissociation, in 
an “ ionic phase." The fact that sea-water contains very uniformly 
3.5% of salts, of which again 90% is fully ionized, implies that sea¬ 
water is also non-molecular to the extent of over 3% by weight; 
and this commonplace medium, hitherto commonly regarded as a 
molecular fluid, appears as an organization of inconceivable 
complexity. 
It would appear that biological “ life ” may be similarly regarded 
as the expression, at any rate partially, of an ionic phase ; and that 
living protoplasm continues the relations of the ions of sea-water: 
what is termed “life” biologically being a state of organization 
evolved in a highly ionized medium (including atmospheric deriv¬ 
atives), and working in terms of nothing else except solar energy. 
All purely molecular theories are so far to be scrapped. It is news 
to many botanists, brought up on the molecular conventions of a 
past generation, that water does not consist wholly of H 2 0 
molecules; but that one ten-millionth exists in the form of H* and 
OH' ions; and this one ten-millionth seems a small amount, as if 
almost negligible. But it must be remembered that such data are 
spatial (cubic), and not linear dimensions as generally employed by 
biologists. A simple sum in arithmetic shows that OH' and H‘ 
ions in the sea run to over 400 tons in a cubic mile (a small unit 
in dealing with the North Atlantic averaging three miles deep); 
or, on an estimate of one in ten million, the H’,OH', ionic-value of 
the world-ocean is 1.3 xlO 11 tons (over a hundred thousand 
millions). Again, owing to the inevitably indirect method of 
approaching these problems on the part of subaerial scientists, 
the ionic hypothesis is proposed in terms of “ dissociation,” 
involving possibly some relation between the ions of a dissolved 
