melted material. May there not exist between | from the same vicinity upon this cold current for cold and warm sea water a tendency similar in the South. Many of them loaded with earth, have some degree to that between oil and water? Seeing how great is the resistance encountered by the Gulf Stream in its Eastward motion, and how insufficient is any head of water in the Gulf to give it its Northward tendency, may there not exist between the waters of the stream and their fluid banks, always heaving and moving to the swell of the sea, a sort of peristaltic force, which, with other agents, assists to keep up and preserve this wonderful system of ocean circulation? We know that undulatory motion varies with temperature in certain other substances, and why should it not vary in water also? been seen aground on the banks. This process of transferring deposites for these shoals has been going on for ages; and, with time, seems altogether adequate to the effect described. Sir Isaac Newton has demonstrated, that the velocity of waves is in the subduplicate ratio of their breadths. Therefore, if two vessels in a calm, one in, and the other outside of the Gulf Stream, would each count the waves that pass, or the times that the vessel rolls from side to side, in any given time, we should have an argument for determining whether the oscillation of a wave in the Gulf Stream, be shorter or longer, whether its rise and fall be greater or less, or whether there be any difference whatever between a warm wave and the cold one from which it is generated. That the waters of the Gulf Stream are more troubled than those of the Atlantic we all know from the "ugly seas," which Navigators so much complain of there. Almost the last, if not the very last word heard from the unfortunate schooner Grampus, was contained in a letter stating how greatly that vessel was distressed by them. But it is facts and not theory that we want. We have not enough of the former to build up any theory at all! Nor should I undertake the structure if we had. In planning a system of observations in this magnificent field, instructions should cover the whole ground, and the attention of observers should be directed to every point from which it is possible for light to come. Therefore, in throwing out these suggestions, sailor like, I have but cast over my bottles; perhaps they may be picked up at some distant day, perhaps they may never be heard of again. Nay more, a geodetic examination as to the course of the Gulf Stream, does not render it by any means certain that it is turned aside by the Grand Banks of Newfoundland at all; but that, in its route from the coasts of Georgia as far towards the shores of Europe as its path has been distinctly ascertained, it describes the arc of a great circle as nearly as may be. Following the line of direction given to it after clearing the Straits of Florida, its course would be nearly on a great circle passing through the poles of the earth. That it should be turned from this and forced along one inclining more to the East, requires, after it leaves these straits, the presence of a new force to give it this Eastward tendency. And have we not precisely such a force in the rate at which different parellels perform their daily rounds about their axis? In consequence of this, the stream, when it first enters the Atlantic from the Gulf, is carried with the earth around its axis at the rate of two miles and a half the minute faster towards the East than it is when it sweeps by the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. That this explanation as to its Eastward tendency should hold good, a current setting from the North towards the South, should have a Westward tendency. Accordingly, and in obedience to the propelling powers, derived from the rate at which different parallels are whirled around in diurnal motion, we find the current from the North, which meets the Gulf Stream on the Grand Banks, taking a South-Westwardly direction, as already described. It runs down to the tropics by the side of the Gulf Stream, and stretches as far to the West as our own shores will allow. Yet, in the face of these facts, and in spite of this force, both Major Rennell and M. Arago make the coasts of the United States and the shoals of Nantucket to turn the Gulf Stream towards the East. The maximum temperature of the Gulf Stream In its course to the North, the Gulf Stream is 86°, or about 9° above the Ocean temperature gradually tends more and more to the Eastward, due the latitude. Increasing its latitude 10°, it loses until it arrives off the banks of Newfoundland, but 2° of temperature. And after having run 3,000 where its course is said to become due East. These miles towards the North, it still preserves, even in banks, it has been thought, deflect it from its pro-winter, the heat of summer. With this temperature, per course, and cause it to take this turn. Ex-it crosses the 40th degree of North latitude, and amination will prove, I think, that they are in part there, overflowing its liquid banks, it spreads itself the effect, certainly not the cause. It is here, that out for thousands of square leagues over the cold wathe frigid current already spoken of, with its ice-ters around, and covers the ocean with a mantle of bergs from the North, are met and melted by the warmth that serves so much to mitigate in Europe warm waters from the Gulf. Of course the loads the rigors of winter. Moving now more slowly, of earth, stones and gravel brought down upon them but dispensing its genial influences more freely, it are here deposited. Captain Scoresby, far away finally meets the British Islands. By these it is in the North, counted 500 icebergs setting out divided, one part going into the polar basin of so much softens climate there. Spitsbergen, the other entering the Bay of Biscay, | circulation, the peculiar features of the surroundbut each with a warmth considerably above Ocean ing country assure us we should have the hottemperature. Such an immense volume of heated test, if not the most pestilential climate in the water can not fail to carry with it beyond the seas world. As the waters in these two cauldrons bea mild and moist atmosphere. And this it is which come heated, they are borne off by the Gulf Stream, and are replaced by cooler currents through the We know not what the depth or the under tem- Caribbean Sea; the surface water, as it enters perature of the Gulf Stream may be. But assu- here, being 3° or 4°, and that in depth, 40° cooler ming the temperature and velocity at the depth of than when it escapes from the Gulf. Taking this 200 fathoms, to be those of the surface, and taking difference in surface temperature only, as the dethe well-known difference between the capacity of gree of heat accumulated there, a simple calculaair and of water for specific heat, as the argument, tion will show, that the quantity of specific heat a simple calculation will show, that the quantity of daily carried off by the Gulf Stream from those heat discharged over the Atlantic from the waters regions, and discharged over the Atlantic, is of the Gulf Stream in a winter's day, would be sufficient to raise mountains of iron from zero sufficient to raise the whole column of atmosphere to the melting point, and to keep up from them that rests upon France and the British Islands, a molten stream of metal greater in volume than from the freezing point to summer heat. the waters daily discharged from the MissisEvery West wind that blows, crosses the stream sippi river. Who, therefore, can calculate the on its way to Europe, and carries with it a portion benign influences of this wonderful current upon of this heat to temper there the Northern winds the climate of the South?"Cui bono?" In the of winter. It is the influence of this stream upon pursuit of this subject, the mind is led from nature climate, that makes Erin the "Emerald Isle of up to nature's God. Who, therefore, in this Christhe Sea," and that clothes the shores of Albion tian land, shall repeat the question? Or whose with evergreen robes; while in the same latitude mind will the study of this subject not fill with proon this side, the coasts of Labrador are fast bound fitable emotions? Unchanged and unchanging alone, in fetters of ice. In a valuable paper on currents, of all created things, the Ocean is the great emMr. Redfield states, that in '31, the harbor of blem of its everlasting Creator. He "treadeth St. John's, Newfoundland, was closed with ice as upon the waves of the sea," and is seen in the wonlate as the month of June; yet, who ever heard of ders of the deep. Yea, "he calleth for its waters, the port of Liverpool, on the other side, though and poureth them out upon the face of the earth.” 2° further North, being closed with ice, even in In obedience to this call, the aqueous portion of the dead of winter? The Baron Humboldt's iso- our planet preserves its beautiful system of circuthermal curves show that the genial influence of lation. By it, heat and warmth are dispensed to this current is felt in Norway, and even on the the extra-tropical regions; clouds and rain are sent shores of Spitsbergen in the polar basin. The to refresh the dry land; and by it, cooling streams mere sweeping of the winds over a large tract of are brought from Polar Seas to temper the heat of ocean without any such warm stream, is not suffi- the torrid zone. At the depth of 240 fathoms, the cient to produce such effects upon climate as is temperature of the currents setting into the Caribfully shown by comparing the climate of Spitsber-bean Sea has been found as low as 48°, while that gen with that of places similarly situated in the South Sea with regard to winds and water, but not with regard to currents. Nor do the beneficial influences of this stream upon climate end here. The West Indian Archipelago is encompassed on one side by its chain of islands, and on the other by the Cordilleras of the Andes bending through the Isthmus of Darien and stretching themselves out over the plains of Central America and Mexico. Beginning on the summit of this range, we leave the regions of perpetual snow, and descend first into the tierra témplada, and then into the tierra caliente, or burning land. Descending still lower, we reach both the level and the surface of the Mexican Seas, where, were it not for this beautiful and benign system of aqueous * Which in all probability is not the case. + From the journals of Mr. Dunsterville. of the surface was 85°. Another cast with 386 fathoms gave 43° against 83° at the surface. The hurricanes of those regions agitate the sea to great depths: that of 1780 tore rocks up from the bottom in 7 fathoms, and cast them on shore. They therefore can not fail to bring to the surface portions of the cooler water below. These cold waters doubtless come down from the North to replace the warm water sent through the Gulf Stream to moderate the cold of Spitsbergen; for within the Arctic Circle, the temperature at corresponding depths off the shores of that Island, is only one degree colder than in the Caribbean Sea; while on the coasts of Labrador the temperature in depth is 25°, or 7° below the freezing point of + American Journal of Science, Vol. 45, p. 293. Caribbean Surface temp. 83° Sept., 84° July, 830, 861o Mosquito Coast. fresh water. Capt. Scoresby relates, that on the her choicest fish. The same is the case in the coast of Greenland, in latitude 72°, the tempera- Pacific. A current of cold water from the South ture of the air was 42°—of the water 34°, and 29° sweeps the shores of Chili, Peru and Columbia, at the depth of 118 fathoms. He there found a and reaches the Gallipagos Islands under the line. current setting to the South, and bearing with it Throughout this whole distance, the world does not this extremely cold water, with vast numbers of afford a more abundant or excellent supply of fish. icebergs whose centres, perhaps, were far below Yet, out in the Pacific, at the Society Islands, zero. It would be curious to ascertain the routes where coral abounds, and the water preserves a of these under currents on their way to the tropi- higher temperature, the fish, though they vie in cal regions, which they are intended to cool. One gorgeousness of coloring with the birds, and plants, has been found at the equator 200 miles broad and 23 colder than the surface water. Unless the land or shoals intervene, it no doubt comes down in a spiral curve. and insects of the tropics, are held in no esteem as an article of food. I have known sailors, even after long voyages, still to prefer their salt beef and pork to a mess of fish taken here. Therefore, Perhaps the best indication as to these cold cur- let those who are curious as to the migratory habits rents may be derived from the fish of the sea. The of fishes, join hands in the proposed system of whales first pointed out the existence of the Gulf observations upon currents-for the few facts Stream by avoiding its warm waters. Along our which we have bearing upon the subject, seem to own coasts, all those delicate animals and marine suggest it as a point of the inquiry to be made, productions which delight in warmer waters are whether the habit of certain fish does not indicate wanting; thus indicating by their absence the cold the temperature of the water; and whether these current from the North now known to exist there. cold and warm currents of the Ocean, do not conIn the genial warmth of the Sea about the Ber-stitute the great highways through which migramudas on one hand and California on the other, tory fishes travel from one region to another. we find, in great abundance, those delicate shell fish and coral formations which are altogether wanting in the same latitudes along the shores of South Carolina. The same obtains in the West coast of South America; for there, the cold current almost reaches the line, before the first sprig of coral is found to grow. Navigators have often met with vast numbers of young sea-nettles (medusa) drifting along with the Gulf Stream. They are known to constitute the principle food for the whale; but whither bound by this route has caused much curious speculation; for it is well known that the habits of the whale are averse to the warm waters of this stream. A few years ago, great numbers of bonita and al- intelligent sea captain informs me, that two or bercore-tropical fish-following the Gulf Stream, three years ago, in the Gulf Stream on the coast entered the English Channel, and alarmed the fish-of Florida, he fell in with such a "school of young ermen of Cornwall and Devonshire, by the havoc sea-nettles as had never before been heard of." which they created among the pilchards there. An The sea was covered with them for many leagues. It may well be questioned if our Atlantic cities and Now the Western Islands is the great place of resort for whales; and at first there is something curious to us in the idea, that the Gulf of Mexico is the harvest field, and the Gulf Stream the gleaner which collects the fruitage planted there, and conveys it thousands of miles off to the hungry whale at sea. But how perfectly in unison is it with the kind and providential care of that great and good Being which feeds the young ravens and caters for matter of dispute among learned men. But as for the office which it performs in the economy of the Ocean, conjecture even is almost silent. Certain it is however, that that sea of weeds was not planted in the middle of the Ocean without design. The marks of intelligence, displayed throughout the whole system of terrestrial adaptations, forbid the idea. Botanists tell us of certain " nodding flowers" which, at a certain stage of growth, bend their heads, that the dust from the anthers may fall upon the stigma; when the necessary impregnation is accomplished, they become again erect. Now it is clear, if the stalk were stronger or weaker, if the force of gravity, or the size of the earth were greater or less, this operation could not take place, the flower would not yield seed after its kind, and the species must become extinct. Such is the delicate snow-drop of our garden walks. Therefore, at creation, when this little flower was put forth, the mass of the earth and the force of gravity must have been taken into account. "There is something curious," says Professor Whewell, and he might have added profitable and instructive too, "in thus considering the whole mass of the earth, from pole to pole, and from circumference to centre as employed in keeping a snow-drop in the position most suited to its vegetable health." How much more forcibly must this adaptation and the necessary terrestrial arrangements apply to this sea and to the Gulf Stream, peopled, as no doubt they are, with myriads and myriads of living creatures! Even as to the depths of this sea we are ignorant; and as to the animals which the Gulf Stream conveys from one part of the Ocean to another, observation has told us scarcely a word. This is a fit subject of inquiry, and comes within the scope and reach of the plan proposed.* The contemplated system of observations will be of high interest also to the meteorologist, whose science at this time is attracting so much attention. The fogs* of Newfoundland, which so much endanger Navigation in winter, doubtless owe their existence to the presence, in that cold sea, of immense volumes of warm water brought by the Gulf Stream. Sir Philip Brooke found the air on each side of it at the freezing point, while that of its waters was 80°. "The heavy, warm, damp air over the current produced great irregularities in his chronometers." The excess of heat daily brought into such a region by the waters of the Gulf Stream, if suddenly stricken from them, would be sufficient to make the whole column of superincumbent atmosphere ten times hotter than melted iron. With such an element of atmospherical disturbance in its bosom, we might expect storms of the most violent kind to accompany it in its course. Accordingly, the most terrific that rage on the Ocean have been known to spend their fury in and near its borders. Our nautical works tell us of a storm which forced this stream back to its sources, and piled up the water in the Gulf to the height of 30 feet. The Ledbury Snow attempted to ride it out. When it abated, she found herself high up on the dry land, and discovered that she had let go her anchor among the tree tops on Elliott's Key. The Florida Keys were inundated many feet, and the scene presented in the Gulf Stream was never surpassed in awful sublimity on the Ocean. The water thus dammed up, is said to have rushed out with won The Sargasso sea is an immense pool, in which are to the manner and the means by which nature collected in gathered in great quantities, gulf weed, drift wood, wrecks, her store houses the coal measures of the mountains. and all the floating substances cast upon the Atlantic. This weed is not strewed over the sea in an unbroken Waters from the Indian ocean, by the Lagullas current-sheet; it is arranged in seams and longitudinal sections, from the frozen regions beyond Cape Horn, through the corresponding to the layers of coal in the coal basin. The ice-bearing current from the Antartic seas-waters from sea is even free, in a great degree, from storms, and if we the Arctic Ocean, through the Labrador current-all find their way into the Atlantic, and deliver whatever floating substances they bear, up to the Gulf Stream-whence, like the fucus natans, it gradually finds its way into this weedy sea, which is a basin in the Atlantic, between the Cape de Verds, Canaries, and Western Islands, quite equal in extent to the Mississippi valley. Three hundred and fifty years ago, Columbus passed over this sea. It was then covered with weeds, as it now is, and as it no doubt had been for ages and ages before. What its depth, or the character of the bottom may be, we know not-we are even ignorant as to the place of growth for its weeds. Yet to the geologist, this is a volume brim full of unread studies and mysterious things-it is a type on a grand scale, of the gathering together the materials for his ancient coal formations-and to such an one, the round world no where else affords a parellel. It is the only page any where to be found, where time, with his everlasting characters, is now writing his commentary as imagine that these weeds in the process of time, gradually wither, contract and sink, we shall have here a beautiful illustration as to the manner in which the coal seams were arranged in layers as we now see them among the mountains. The bowsprit of the "Little Belt," lost in the West Indies, was found not long afterwards near the edge of the Sargasso. In a former voyage, I once met upon its horders a rough spar of yellow pine, probably grown in one of our Southera States. It was covered with a beautiful crop of anatifae, interspersed with crabs, and surrounded by a school of dolphin. It had evidently been in the water a great while, for it was so water-soaked, that the wood had become translucent-almost as much so as thin slips of very "fat" light wood. Receiving a still heavier load of barnacles and molluscs, it would in time have reached this sea, and been borne down to the depths below with its load of inhabitants, there, before the next hour, be marked on the geolo I a ༣་ derful velocity against the fury of the gale, produ- [and the waves rose to such a height that forts and eing a sea that beggared description. The great hurricane of 1780 commenced at Barbadoes. In it, the bark was blown from the trees, and the fruits of the earth destroyed; the very bottom and depths of the sea were uprooted, gical time-piece, to be elaborated into the most beautiful and rare among fossils. This basin is the great centre and receptacle of Atlantic drift. The moss and the lichen of the extreme North, brought down to the Grand Banks, are handed over on icebergs to the Gulf Stream, to be borne on towards this central whirl and lodged by the side of the larch and the fir of the farthest South, conveyed also by the ice-bearing* currents from Cape Horn. There too, in the caverns below, are to be found the flora and vegetables, with land shells, insects, etc., borne along with the drift wood from the river Gambia and the coast of Africa, from the Amazon and the Oronoco, the upper Missouri and lower Mississippi. In short, by reason of these currents and this sea of weeds, we have before our eyes the means of grouping in that basin, the most extended, varied, and magnificent collection of vegetable and animal matter that is known in any of the formations that have yet become geological. That the drift wood from these regions should not be more often met with at sea, is not at all surprising. Barely ; floating at best, the prolific waters of the Gulf Stream soon load the floating trees with immense numbers of barnacles and shell fish. Many of them possess the power of expansion in a greater or less degree, and by a sort of concert of action, such as we see among corals and other fish, may possess the power of floating their shifting domicil at any depth. Finally reaching the Sargasso sea, the temperature of the water and other conditions become unfavorable to their animal health; they die, and thus the weight of the sheils is sufficient to carry the whole tree, with its branches down to the lower deposits, and place it there in the most gentle manner. entire, castles were washed away, and their great guns carried many yards; houses were blown down, ships were wrecked, and the bodies of men and beasts lifted up above the earth and dashed to pieces in the storm. At the different islands not less than volcanic; and but a few years ago, as if in warning, or to give note as to the state of preparation below, an island was cast up from the bottom, to sink again in this very sea. But while the currents of the sea in one place are busied with the work of collecting and hiding in the middle of the ocean this vast assemblage of vegetable remains, they are employed on the out-skirts in collecting and arranging the materials for a formation of quite another sort. The ice-bearing currents from the North and the South bring down icebergs laden with earth, boulders and the carcasses of animals, to be deposited at one place upon the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, and at the other upon the Lagullas banks of South Africa. These are the places at which nature bids the tepid currents of the torrid zone to meet the icebergs from either pole, and to relieve them of their frigid loads of rocks and gravel. Are there not similar banks, at greater or less depth, near the junction of every ice-bearing current, with its equatorial counterpart? Geology, through its mineral wealth and interests, it has been said, is at the bottom of the anti-corn law league in England. It certainly has something to do with the tariff doctrines of Pennsylvania; for without the iron and the coal of that and other States, legislators would argue less the question of home industry, tariff and protection. The learned chairman of this association had occasion a few weeks ago to point out the connection between geology and experiments upon the ballistic pendulum. This all pervading science, through the currents of the sea, is quite as closely allied to navigation as, through the mineral wealth of the land, it is to legislation, custom-house laws, and Government revenue. Whose pursuits would seem to be farther apart than that of the geologist among the cliffs of This process requires a very short time; hence it is, that the hills and the outcrops of the valleys, and that of the fating drift-wood has not been met with in larger quanti- mariner among the billows of the sea? Meeting on the crest ties in this sea. But some idea may be derived of the of two waves, they join hands across the Gulf Stream; the quantity of drift which is thus conveyed, from the fact, that" weedy sea" is common ground, and the iceberg a volume the place of light house keeper at the Tortugas islands is of classic lore and high import; to one it is a type of ancient Considered one of the most profitable on account of its jet- formations, to the other an index pregnant with meaning. sam. The value of the copper and lead to be collected In short, the facts collected by one are to the other points from the fragments of boats wrecked on the Mississippi, and of the most valuable information. drifted on the Tortugas, is considered by the keeper quite equal to his salary from the Government. Now these islands are on the very edge of the stream, and the materials from wrecked boats bear but a small proportion to the drift-wood brought down that river. Let therefore the imagination picture the mass of materials, that in the process of ages upon ages would be thus transported from the Mississippi Valley, from the plains of the Oronoco and the head waters of the Amazon, from the banks of the St. Lawrence and along the coast. the forests of Africa, from central America, the West Indies, and shores of Labrador, into the Sargasso sea. This sea can be looked upon in no other light than as the germ of a future coal basin or peat bog, in which, at some remote day, when we perhaps shall have become fossils. The line of meeting between the waters of the Gulf Stream and the Atlantic is distinct to the naked eye for several hundred miles. This unreadiness of cold and tepid sea-water to commingle has been often remarked upon, and seems to impart to one current the power of dividing and turning others aside. Thus the Gulf Stream bifurcates the Labrador current, one part of which underruns the Gulf Stream, and the other takes a southwestwardly direction The reverse happens with the current from the Indian ocean, of which the Lagullas is a part. Here the cold cur rent divides the warm one-one branch of which, as the Lagullas, after passing the Cape of Good Hope, is even turned back towards the northwest, while the other, the addis part of the sea dry land, other geologists will roam, Australian, pursues its natural course to the southward adaire, speculate and dispute. Indeed, it requires but and eastward, passing the island from which it takes its Perhaps it was upon the tail of this or some other equa Lttle stretch of the imagination to conceive that nature, name. with her corps of earthquake sappers and volcano miners, is now at work there, laying her train for a grand geological] display of uplift and heave. Teneriffe and the Azores are I have seen icebergs borne up on this current into the had been compressed by impact from the ball, so as to ad South Atlantic as far North as lat. 37° S. *In his paper before the National Institute, Captain Mordecai stated, that the sand used as a core in the pendulum here and present the appearance of sand-stone. |