Why is the sea salty?
From the first chapter of the first book of Moses, called Genesis, we learn that, as between water and land, the ocean had the first place in terrestrial existence, for it is there stated that on the third day in the calendar of the creation the waters under the heavens were gathered together and the dry land appeared. Both from a chemical and a geological standpoint it appears that the waters of the ocean were salt from the beginning. Dr. T. S. Hunt, one of the ablest writers on the physical history of the globe, in his chemical and geological essays, referring to that period when the earth was in a molten state and surrounded by an envelope of gases and of vapor of water, states: "There would be the conversion of all the carbonates, chlorides, and sulphates into silicates, and the separation of carbon, chlorine, and sulphur in the form of acid gases which, with nitrogen, vapor of water, and a probable excess of oxygen, could form the dense primeval atmosphere...
