Page:Physical Geography of the Sea and its Meteorology.djvu/286

260 instruments, when they have put the different parts of their machinery together, and set it to work, find, as in the chronometer, for instance, that it is subject in its performance to many irregularities and imperfections; that in one state of things there is expansion, and in another state contraction among cogs, springs, and wheels, with an increase or diminution of rate. This defect the makers have sought to overcome; and with a beautiful display of ingenuity, they have attached to the works of the instrument a contrivance which has had the effect of correcting these irregularities by counteracting the tendency of the instrument to change its performance with the changing influences of temperature. This contrivance is called a compensation; and a chronometer or clock that is well regulated and properly compensated will perform its office with certainty, and preserve its rate under all the vicissitudes of heat and cold to which it may be exposed. In the clock-work of the ocean and the machinery of the universe, order and regularity are maintained by a system of compensations. A celestial body, as it revolves around its sun, flies off under the influence of centrifugal force; but immediately the forces of compensation begin to act, the planet is brought back to its elliptical path, and held in the orbit for which its mass, its motions, and its distances were adjusted. Its compensation is perfect. So, too, with the salts and shells of the sea in the machinery of the ocean; from them are derived principles of compensation the most perfect; through their agency the undue effects of heat and cold, of storm and rain, in disturbing the equilibrium and producing thereby currents in the sea, are compensated, regulated, and controlled. The dews, the rains, and the rivers are continually dissolving certain minerals of the earth, and carrying them off to the sea. This is an accumulative process; and if it were not compensated, the sea would finally become, as the Dead Sea is, saturated with salt, and therefore unsuitable for the habitation of many fish of the sea. The sea-shells and marine insects afford the required compensation. They are the conservators of the ocean. As the salts are emptied into the sea, these creatures secrete them again and pile them up in solid masses, to serve as the bases of islands and continents, to be in the process of ages upheaved into dry land, and then again dissolved by the dews and rains, and washed by the rivers away into the sea again.

490. Whence does the sea derive its salts?—The question as to