Page:Physical Geography of the Sea and its Meteorology.djvu/291

Rh geological column of her early processes, and there we find the fossil shell and the remains of marine organisms to inform us that when the foundations of our mountains were laid with granite, and immediately succeeding that remote period when the primary formations were completed, the sea was, as it is now, salt; for had it not been salt, whence could those creeping things which fashioned the sea-shells that cover the tops of the Andes, or those madrepores that strew the earth with solid matter that has been secreted from briny waters, or those infusorial deposits which astound the geologist with their magnitude and extent, or those fossil remains of the sea which have astonished, puzzled, and bewildered man in all ages—whence, had not the sea been salt when its metes and bounds were set, could these creatures have obtained solid matter for their edifices and structures? Much of that part of the earth's crust which man stirs up in cultivation, and which yields him bread, has been made fruitful by these "salts," which all manner of marine insects, aqueous organisms, and sea-shells have secreted from the ocean. Much of this portion of our planet has been filtered through the sea, and its insects and creeping things are doing now precisely what they were set about when the dry land appeared, namely, preserving the purity of the ocean, and regulating it in the due performance of its great offices. As fast as the rains dissolve the salts of the earth, and send them down through the rivers to the sea, these faithful and everlasting agents of the Creator elaborate them into pearls, shells, corals, and precious things; and so, while they are preserving the sea, they are also embellishing the land by imparting new adaptations to its soil, fresh beauty and variety to its landscapes. Whence came the salts of the sea originally is a question which perhaps never will be settled satisfactorily to every philosophic mind, but it is sufficient for the Christian philosopher to recollect that the salts of the sea, like its waters and the granite of the hills, are composed of substances which, when reduced to their simple state, are found for the most part to be mere gaseous or volatile matter of some kind or other. Thus we say that granite is generally composed of feldspar, mica, and quartz, yet these three minerals are made of substances more or less volatile in combination with oxygen gas. Iron, of which there is merely a trace, is the only ingredient which, in its uncombined and simple state, is not gaseous or volatile. Now, was the feldspar of the granite originally formed in one heap,