The transport by denudation of detrital and dissolved matter from the land to the ocean has had a most important influence on the events of geological history. The existing surface features of the earth must have been largely conditioned by the dynamical effects arising therefrom. In dealing with the subject of mountain genesis we will, elsewhere, see that all the great mountain ranges have originated in the accumulation of the detrital sediments near the shore in areas which, in consequence of the load, gradually became depressed and developed into synclines of many thousands of feet in depth. The most impressive surface features of the Globe originated
in this manner. We will see too that these events were of a rhythmic character; the upraising of the mountains involving intensified mechanical denudation over the elevated area and in this way an accelerated transport of detritus to the sea; the formation of fresh deposits; renewed synclinal sinking of the sea floor, and, finally, the upheaval of a younger mountain range. This extraordinary sequence of events has been determined by the events of detrital denudation acting along with certain general conditions which have all along involved the growth of compressive stresses in the surface crust of the Earth.
The effects of purely solvent denudation are less easily traced, but, very probably, they have been of not less importance. I refer here to the transport from the land to the sea of matter in solution.
Solvent denudation, as observed above, takes place mainly in the soils and in this way over the more level continental areas. It has resulted in the removal from the land and transfer to the ocean of an amount of matter which represents a uniform layer of one half a kilometre; that is of more than 1,600 feet of rock. The continents have, during geological time, been lightened to this extent. On the other hand all this matter has for the greater part escaped the geosynclines and become uniformly diffused throughout the ocean or precipitated over its floor principally on the continental slopes before the great depths are reached. Of this material the ocean
waters contain in solution an amount sufficient to increase their specific gravity by 2.7 per cent.