TIONS--
DISCOVERIES RESULTING FROM DEEP-SEA SOUNDINGS.

Before proceeding to the consideration of the wonders connected with and
contained in the sea, we shall treat of the composition of the sea
itself and of its extent, depth, and bottom.

What is the sea made of? Salt water, is the ready reply that rises
naturally to every lip. But to this we add the question,--What is salt
water? or, as there are many kinds of salt water, of what sort of salt
water does the sea consist? To these queries we give the following
reply, which, we doubt not, will rather surprise some of our readers.

Fresh water, as most people are aware, is composed of two gases--oxygen
and hydrogen. Sea water is composed of the same gases, with the
addition of muriate of soda, magnesia, iron, lime, sulphur, copper,
silex, potash, chlorine, iodine, bromine, ammonia, and silver. What a
dose! Let bathers think of it next time they swallow a gulp of sea
water.

Most of these substances, however, exist in comparatively small quantity
in the sea, with the exception of muriate of soda, or common table salt;
of which, as all bathers know from bitter experience, there is a very
considerable quantity. The quantity of silver contained in sea water is
very small indeed. Nevertheless, small though it be, the ocean is so
immense, that, it has been calculated, if all the silver in it were
collected, it would form a mass that would weigh about two hundred
million tons!

The salt of the ocean varies considerably in different parts. Near the
equator, the great heat carries up a larger proportion of water by
evaporation than in the more temperate regions; and thus, as salt is not
removed by evaporation, the ocean in the torrid zone is salter than in
the temperate or frigid zones.

The salts of the sea, and other substances contained in it, are conveyed
thither by the fresh-water streams that pour into it from all the
continent of the world. Maury, in his delightful work, "The Physical
Geography of the Sea," tells us that "water is Nature's great carrier.
With its currents it conveys heat away from the torrid zone, and ice
from the frigid; or, bottling the caloric away in the vesicle of its
vapour, it first makes it impalpable, and then conveys it by unknown
paths to the most distant parts of the Earth. The materials of which
the coral builds the island, and the sea-conch its shell, are gathered
by this restless leveller from mountains, rocks, and valleys