256 bulletin: museum of comparative zoology. 



southwest coast of Africa (Schott, 1902, taf . 8) . Subsurface tempera- 

 tures would reveal upwelling by continuity between the cold water 

 near the surface and in the abyss; and surface salinity in regions of 

 active upwelling, is about the same as the salinity of the layer from 

 which the updraught comes, as is very clearly illustrated by the 

 salinity curves off the coast of Morocco (Schott, 1912, pi. 33). 



I have already pointed out (1914a) that the salinities and tempera- 

 tures of the Gulf of Maine in 1912 do not suggest upwelling, except 

 locally on a small scale; and the records for the winter of 1912-1913 

 and for the summer of 19J3 all support this view. If abyssal water 

 enters at all into the complex of the Gulf of Maine it must be in such 

 insignificant amount that it has no appreciable effect on its tempera- 

 ture or salinity. However, this semi-enclosed basin may w^ell differ 

 hydrographically from the waters over the shelf south and west of 

 Cape Cod. 



In weighing the evidence of temperature, we must first consider 

 whether the surface over the continental shelf is abnormally cold, 

 as it has usually been characterized, most recently by Clark (1914). 

 So firmly grounded is this idea, that the waters of the Gulf of Maine 

 have often been called "Arctic." But, as I have already pointed 

 out (1914a, 1914b) the observations in the Gulf of Maine during the 

 summers of 1912 and 1913 and the winter of 1912 and 1913, corrobo- 

 rate Verrill's early contention that its temperature is nearly normal 

 for its geographic location. It is, of course, much colder than the 

 Gulf Stream; its surface temperature 7°-9° lower than the average 

 for its latitude (Kriimmel, 1907). But the waters of its deeps are no 

 colder than the mean annual air temperature over the part of its 

 watershed from which blow the chilling winds of winter, with their 

 accompanying snowfall (1914a, p. 97). And the bottom temperature 

 of its eastern basin in 1913, was almost precisely the same as the mean 

 annual temperature of the air at Yarmouth, on the neighboring Nova 

 Scotian coast (43.3° as given by the Nova Scotian Coast Pilot, British 

 Admiralty 1903, p. 11), and about a degree warmer than the mean for 

 the year at St. John, New Brunswick, on the Bay of Fundy. And as 

 Tizard (1907) has pointed out, the coast water is warmer off New 

 York in summer than off England, and even in November its surface 

 temperature is no lower than west of Ireland, though the latter is 

 commonly described as warmed by the Atlantic Current. In short, 

 as Schott (1897) and others have insisted, it is more because of its 

 contrast with the Gulf Stream than because of its absolute tempera- 

 ture that the coolness of our coast water has so impressed itselffon 



