Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/545

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PROPERTIES AND CONSTITUTION OF SEA-WATER.
529

the society as a basis for the use of the membership in the arrangement of their beneficial system. As this table has never, so far as I know, been published outside the society's own journals, I submit it here, with the expectation of life, according to the American tables:

AGE Expectation of
life-years
and decimals.
Expectation of
sickness for that
year-weeks
and decimals.
AGE Expectation of
life-years
and decimals.
Expectation of
sickness for that
year-weeks
and decimals.
21 41·5 ·450 41 27·4  ·763
22 40·8 ·455 42 26·7  ·803
23 40·2 ·460 43 26·   ·843
24 39·5 ·465 44 25·3  ·885
25 38·8 ·470 45 24·5  ·930
26 38·1 ·476 46 23·8  ·980
27 37·4 ·483 47 23·1 1·035
28 36·6 ·491 48 22·4 1·095
29 36·  ·499 49 21·6 1·106
30 35·3 ·509 50 20·9 1·230
31 34·6 ·520 51 20·2 1·308
32 33·9 ·532 52 19·5 1·396
33 33·2 ·545 53 18·8 1·494
34 32·5 ·560 54 18·1 1·604
35 31·8 ·578 55 17·4 1·730
36 31·1 ·599 56 16·7 1·875
37 30·3 ·624 57 16·  2·040
38 29·6 ·653 58 15·4 2·230
39 28·9 ·686 59 14·7 2·450
40 28·2 ·723 60 14·1 2·700

PROPERTIES AND CONSTITUTION OF SEA-WATER.

By M. ANTOINE DE SAPORTA.

IT has been said that, without the sea, civilization could not have been developed, and the world would have continued barbarous. That element, from the primitive times of mankind, has brought together the peoples of the most distant countries, and inspired the ancients with the idea of the Infinite. Homer believed in a river Oceanus; the Hindoo mythologians in a liquid expanse, boundless as space. The fishermen who set their rude nets in the creeks of the Cyclades were, perhaps, the first naturalists, and the Phoenician sailors may have been the first marine engineers. In our own time, all the sciences find in the ocean either a limitless field of exploration, or an enemy to be conquered. Zoologists, closeted in their laboratories, endeavor to determine the beings which the dredge has brought up from frightful depths, while hydrographers and constructors study the currents, raise jetties, and excavate ports. The public visit the aquariums, admire the dikes and excavations, and applaud what they see, but do not see all. Our purpose is to explain the researches of the