96 THE FAIRY-LAND OF SCIENCE. 
should taste salt and bitter ? Every drop of water 
which flows from the earth to the sea carries some- 
thing with it. Generally, there is so little of any sub- 
stance in the water that we cannot taste it, and we 
call it pure water ; but the purest of spring or river- 
water has always some solid matter dissolved in it, 
and all this goes to the sea. Now, when the sun- 
waves come to take the water out of the sea again, 
they will have nothing but the pure water itself; and 
so all these salts and carbonates and other solid 
substances are left behind, and we taste them in sea- 
water. 
Some day, when you are at the seaside, take 
some sea-water and set it on the hob till a great 
deal has simmered gently away, and the liquid 
is very thick. Then take a drop of this liquid, and 
examine it under a microscope. As it dries up 
gradually, you will see a number of crystals forming, 
some square and these will be crystals of ordinary 
salt ; some oblong these will be crystals of gypsum 
or alabaster ; and others of various shapes. Then, 
when you see how much matter from the land is 
contained in sea-water, you will no longer wonder 
that the sea is salt ; on the contrary, you will ask, 
Why does it not grow salter every year ? 
The answer to this scarcely belongs to our history 
of a drop of water, but I must just suggest it to you. 
In the sea are numbers of soft-bodied animals, like 
the jelly animals which form the coral, which require 
hard material for their shells or the solid branches on 
which they live, and they are greedily watching for 
these atoms of lime, of flint, of magnesia, and of other 
