BIGELOW: COAST WATER EXPLORATION OF 1913. 251 



voyager, have been so well described by Schott (1912), and are a matter 

 of such common knowledge, that it suffices to state here that water 

 with a mean annual surface temperature below 59°, and mean salinity 

 below 34%o may be so classed, as distinguished from the warm and 

 saline ocean waters of the Gulf Stream. This cold, comparatively 

 fresh water, which bathes the whole breadth of the continental shelf 

 between Nova Scotia and Chesapeake Bay, out to about the 100 

 fathom curve, except when temporarily obscured or dispossessed by 

 Gulf Stream water, and which fills the Gulf of Maine, has usually 

 been explained as coming from the north, or from the abyss of the 

 Atlantic. According to the first of these theories, the coast water is a 

 branch of a current flowing from the north and northeast. Almost 

 all the ocean atlases show something of this sort; and it has been 

 accepted in one form or another in almost all the textbooks on physi- 

 cal geography and oceanography (for example, Maury, 1855 ; Reclus, 

 1873; Attlmayer, 1883; Thoulet, 1904, Krummel, 1911; Schott, 1912; 

 the German marine observatory, Deutsche Seewarte, 1882 ; the current 

 chart of the U. S. Navy by Soley, 1911; and the British Admiralty 

 current chart). The mere coldness of the coast water suggests a 

 northern origin, as does its comparatively low salinity; while the fact, 

 long ago emphasized by Verrill and others, that it supports a boreal 

 littoral fauna, contrasting sharply with the warm water fauna carried 

 northward in the sweep of the Gulf Stream is evidence in the same 

 direction. The continuity, too, of the cold zone all along the coast 

 as far north as Newfoundland, with gradually decreasing mean tem- 

 perature from south to north ; and its sharp limitation seaward by the 

 Gulf Stream, argue for a northern origin. And when we add to this 

 the southwesterly drift which has been noted at many points along 

 the coast between Nova Scotia and Cape Hatteras, it would require 

 very strong evidence to prove that northern currents do not enter, in 

 greater or less degree, into the composition of our coast water. 



Up to 1897 the Labrador Current, a polar stream which has borne 

 an unsavory reputation among mariners ever since its discovery in 

 1497 by John Cabot, was generally accepted as the source of this 

 northern water, being so represented in practically all of the early 

 atlases and textbooks; while Libbey (1891, 1895) expressly describes 

 the cold water on the continental shelf south of Nantucket as one of 

 its branches. And this view is still widely held, for example, the U. S. 

 Navy Department states that the Labrador Current flows from the 

 Grand Banks past Nova Scotia, southward in a narrowing belt as 

 far even as the coast of Florida (Sumner, Osburn, and Cole, 1913, 



