Page:Physical Geography of the Sea and its Meteorology.djvu/287

whence the salts of the sea were originally derived, of course has not escaped the attention of philosophers. I once thought with Darwin and those other philosophers who hold that the sea derived its salts originally from the washings of the rains and rivers. I now question that opinion for, in the course of the researches connected with the "Wind and Current Charts," I have found evidence, from the sea and in the Bible, which seems to cast doubt upon it. The account given in the first chapter of Genesis, and that contained in the hieroglyphics which are traced by the hand of Nature on the geological column as to %he order of creation, are marvellously accordant. The Christian man of science regards them both as true; and he never overlooks the fact that, while they differ in the mode and manner as well as in the things they teach, yet they never conflict; and they contain no evidence going to show that the sea was ever fresh; on the contrary, they both afford circumstantial evidence sufficient for the belief that the sea was salt as far back as the morning of creation, or at least as the evening and the morning of the day when the dry land appeared. That the rains and the rivers do dissolve salts of various kinds from the rocks and soil, and empty them into the sea, there is no doubt. These salts cannot be evaporated, we know; and we also know that many of the lakes, as the Dead Sea, which receive rivers and have no outlet, are salt. Hence the inference by some philosophers that these inland water-basins received their salts wholly from the washings of the soil; and consequently the conjecture arose that the great sea derived its salts from the same source and by the same process. But, and per contra, though these solid ingredients cannot be taken out of the sea by evaporation, they can be extracted by other processes. We know that the insects of the sea do take out a portion of them, and that the salt ponds and arms which, from time to time in the geological calendar, have been separated from the sea, afford an escape by which the quantity of chloride of sodium in its waters—the most abundant of its solid ingredients —is regulated. The insects of the sea cannot build their structures of this salt, for it would dissolve again, and as fast as they could separate it. But here the ever-ready atmosphere comes into play, and assists the insects in regulating the salts. It cannot take them up from the sea, it is true, but it can take the sea away from them: for it pumps up the water from these pools that have been barred off, transfers it to the clouds, and they