274 
Charles Schuchert. 
We know that a far greater variety of life is found in the salty 
waters of the seas and oceans than is the case in the fresh waters 
of the present and the past. The many kinds of salts in the oceans 
appear to be a stimulus toward individual and specific differentiation. 
To-day the marine waters have about 3*5 per cent of salts and 
three quarters of these are sodium chloride. This present quantity, 
however, is, as has been said, the accumulation of the geologic 
ages, and from this conclusion it follows that the Archeozoic 
oceans had far less salts and probably a different salt combination. 
It is likely that at all times the oceans were salty, but in late 
Archeozoic time the amount may not have risen to one half what 
it is now. The lime and magnesium salts in solution may have 
been at first far greater in quantity than at present, but as soon as 
denitrifying bacteria came into existence, the warm water oceans 
were probably freed of their lime sulphates as quickly and as 
thoroughly as they are at present. It would also appear that the 
oceans originally received far less nitrogen from the lands than 
they do now, since the continents of Archeozoic time had no land 
plants to assist in taking this element out of the atmosphere and 
in turn furnishing it to the rivers to transport to the seas. 
Church is very positive that the primitive lands could have 
had no soils and that everywhere there was a hard rock surface 
until they were clad with verdure. But an earth with an 
atmosphere holding water vapor was bound at once to break down 
the rocks and so to form soils. The sediments of the Archeozoic 
formations were derived from crystalline rocks, the original source 
of all sedimentary strata. Theirnatureislike that of the Proterozoic 
sediments, and since these latter are far less metamorphosed, it 
can be definitely stated that a study of them leads to the conclusion 
that the lands must have had, ever since there was an atmosphere 
and rain, arkoses (broken up crystalline rocks without chemical 
alteration) and soils, for if not, whence came the marine sediments ? 
Of course these primitive soils had no humus in them, for there 
was no land life from which this could be made, but we can depend 
upon it that along the seashore and in the marine swamps the 
detritus of the land was most comminuted and also more or less 
changed chemically. Here the waves would wash out, and the 
wind distribute, some of the moribund life of oceans, and therefore 
land humus had its origin at the sea margin. With the adaptation 
of the hardier marine seaweeds to these marginal strips of shore, the 
tvansmigvation of the plants of the oceans over the lands was begun. 
