Show ar watery natee go where we will upon our earth earthy it is to everywhere present the great ocean a body of f water occupying seven tenths of the face of the glo gio globe e covers all its deeper irregularities to depths varying from a mere nim aim to thirty or forty thousand feet the whole mass of the water including the atlantic and the pacific and the smaller oceans is is perhaps equivalent to a complete coating of the earths surface it it were perfectly smooth having a thic thickness knes s of nearly a mile to a certain extent it may be described as an universal solvent whose real contents no one oner can tell for tor we know little of the he minutiae of natures chemistry but it is easy to detect some of the solids it holds in solution or suspension sio n under ordinary circumstances and on ien len a large larga arg scale in ten thousand parts of sea water there are common salt of epsom salts 56 of glaubert Glau bers salts 47 of carbonate of lime 13 of silica or flint 3 and of sundry matters 3 parts in all parts besides gages of which atmospheric air is therdo thera ost st abundant all these can be detected the iodine iron and other substances known tobe present cannot be thus calculated these quantities are not to be despised for we find that estimating the average depth of the ocean at feet the total quantity of e common salt would amount to more than millions of millions of const tons while that of silica small as the percentage seems would be millions 0 millions of tons but this is not riot all the fresh water also contains inorganic salts to the extent of from two to three parts in besides carrying a special ai load to the ocean or depositing it la hi its hta course and in some cases that load is of real importance the ganges alone is thought to carry millions of tons toas of mud every year to the ocean and the nile has long been accumulating mud at its mouth which in the course of or ages has formed that extensive delta to which egypt owes its existence the earliest seat of human civilization and a tract of land whose fertility is nowhere surpassed in other places asat the mouth of the elbe the mud thus accumulated consists dotso sot so much of the material brought down ay the river as of the remains of countless myriads of organic beings killed where the contact ct of salt and fresh water takes glace place thus the mud itself park part of which is known in some rivers to be drifted over several hundred miles OB on the surface of the ocean and which is pro probably bably babiy carried much f urther further by the under currents is a record of shore life and mixes with the almost similar heaps of the shells and aad cases ef of forami which have recently been found to pave the vast depths of the wide atlantic for the eighteen hundred miles that extend between the shores of america and those of ireland stray chapters on earth and ocean |