Why is the sea salty? Rare Neo-Latin poem, inspired by scientific debates.

[Neo-Latin] / [Geology]. Mare Salsum Oder: Curieuse Frag, woher es komme, daß das Meer gesaltzen seye? Sive: Resolutio Poetica Quaestionis Problematicae, à Fundatione Forcica hoc anno Parisiis pro Praemiis propositae, Scilicet: Unde Mare sit salsum? Pedeponti [Regensburg]: typis Joannis Francisci Hanck, 1728. 4to [21.9 x 17.7 cm], [4] ff., with woodcut head-piece and initial. Unbound, unopened, stitching partially preserved. 
 
 
Rare (no U.S. copies) first and only edition of this unusual Neo-Latin poem addressing the current scientific debate about the origins and causes of sea salinity. The piece is preserved here in an unopened copy. The anonymous poet, who signs the poem from Regensburg on 27 January 1728, refers to the Sorbonne and to a prize recently proposed in Paris concerning the seal-salt question. 
 
I have not been able to pin down what this ‘prize’ was, but it seems that the poem is participating in the recent discussions about sea salinity advanced most notably by Edmund Halley in the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions (from 1715) and by Luigi Ferdinando Marsili in his 1725 Histoire Physique de la Mer.
 
The poet’s droll (and scientifically unsatisfactory) conclusion is that the sea’s salinity comes from God.
 
 
OCLC and KVK locate no U.S. examples of this title and worldwide only the copies at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, Staatliche Bibliothek Regensburg, National Library of Scotland, and Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin.
 
*Collated with the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek copy; Edmund Halley, “A short account of the cause of the saltness of the ocean, and of the several lakes that emit no rivers; with a proposal, by help thereof, to discover the age of the World,” The Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions, 31 August 1715, pp. 296-300; Luigi Ferdinando Marsili, Histoire Physique de la Mer; William J. Wallace, ed., The Development of The Chlorinity/Salinity Concept in Oceanography.