Page:Physical Geography of the Sea and its Meteorology.djvu/218

specimen, according to analysis, was of sea water, and it is not necessary to call in the supposition of a brine spring to account for this heavy specimen. If we admit the principle assumed by Sir Charles Lyell, that water from the great pools and basins of the sea can never ascend to cross the ridges which form these pools and basins, then the harmonies of the sea are gone, and we are forced to conclude they never existed. Every particle of water that sinks below a submarine ridge is ipso facto, by his reasoning, stricken from the channels of circulation, to become thenceforward for ever motionless matter. The consequence would be "cold obstruction" in the depths of the sea, and a system of circulation between different seas of the waters only that float above the shoalest reefs and barriers of each. If the water in the depths of the sea were to be confined there—doomed to everlasting repose,—then why was it made fluid, or why was the sea made any deeper than just to give room for its surface currents to skim along? If water once below the reefs and shallows must remain below them,—why were the depths of the ocean filled with fluid instead of solid matter? Doubtless, when the seas were measured and the mountains stood in the balance, the solid and fluid matters of the earth were adjusted in exact proportions to insure perfection in the terrestrial machinery. I do not believe in the existence of any such imperfect mechanism, or in any such failure of design as the imparting of useless properties to matter, such as fluidity to that which is doomed to be stationary, would imply. To my mind, the proofs—the theoretical proofs,—the proofs derived exclusively from reason and analogy—are as clear in favour of this under current from the Mediterranean as they were in favour of the existence of Leverrier's planet before it was seen through the telescope at Berlin. Now suppose, as Sir Charles Lyell maintains, that none of these vast quantities of salt which this surface current takes into the Mediterranean find their way out again. It would not be difficult to show, even to the satisfaction of that eminent geologist, that this indraught conveys salt away from the Atlantic faster than all the fresh-water streams empty fresh supplies of salt into the ocean. Now, besides this drain, vast quantities of salts are extracted from sea water for coral reefs, shell banks, and marl beds; and by such reasoning as this, which is perfectly sound and good, we establish the existence of this under current, or else we are forced to the very unphilosophical conclusion that