THE NORTHEEN SEAS. 287 



our institute, nud confirmed by the map of M. Findlny, published in 

 England in the Journal of the Koyal Geographioal Society. 



The northern basin of tlie Atlantic is, as I have just said, entirely 

 analogons to the northern basin of the Pacific. The whale, the seal, the 

 porpoise, and fisheries in general, attract the same European and 

 American navigators. The warm currents, ascending from the ecjuator, 

 produce upon the eastern and western shores of each the same climate 

 and the same vegetation. 



Upper California and Oregon rival Western Europe, and when the 

 hardy settlers of the Anglo-Saxon race have peopled the more northern 

 shore of the Pacific basin, it will equal the J^orwegian coast, where, 

 according to Horace, 



Ubi Scandia dives 



Halecas totura mittit piscosa per orbem. 



" Where rich Scandinavia catches herring for the whole world." One of 

 our statesmen has predicted that here will be the seat of civilization in 

 1957. 



M. Arago has often said, quoting Napoleon I, that the most powerful 

 of all rhetorical figures is repetition. I therefore repeat what I have 

 written betbre, that the superiority of northern climates over those of 

 the south is due to the fact, that almost all the temperate water of the 

 great warm current of the equatorial region ascends to the north, as in 

 the Atlantic, by the Gulf Stream, giving to Norway the rich culture which 

 was the admiration of the observers of La Peine Hortense in 185G, and to 

 Oregon the giants of the vegetable world, trees of 100 metres (330 feet) in 

 height. Look at the map of M. Duperrey, who has discovered one of the 

 three currents which carry the warm water of the equator to the south. 

 Observe those three currents, that of the Indian Ocean, the South Pa- 

 cific, and Australia ; mark the small amount of w ater carried by them 

 only a short distance from the equator toward the antarctic pole, while 

 the two great and powerful currents of the Atlantic and of the northern 

 Pacific take from the ecjuator even almost the entire mass of water of 

 ihe warm current encircling the intertropical world, to transport it to 

 latitudes in our hemisphere equal or superior to those of the north of 

 Scotland. 



Notwithstanding the contents of many original memoirs ui)on the 

 question of the excess of temperature of the northern over the southern 

 hemisphere, what a display the world of compilers still make of worn- 

 out lumber, of superannuated opinions, relative to the causes which 

 render our latitudes immensely superior in climate to those of the south. 

 We complain of the inadequacy of literary criticism in our day, but 

 what may not be said of scientific criticism, when we see the finest minds 

 led by the best accredited works, in ignorance of the actual state of 

 science, to repeat the echoes of the meteorological data of 1800 ! 



These preliminary remarks were necessary to show the importance of 

 all investigations made, or to be made, in the northern basin of the At- 

 lantic. The fishers of the Scandinavian shores, and the whaling expe- 

 ditions to Newfoundland, and the seas separating Greenland from 

 America, follow routes so uniform, and deviate so little from the line 

 leading directly to the scene of their labors, that one is surprised at the 

 incompleteness of the records of their frequent passages. They work for 

 money, not for science ; the field is therefore open to more disinterested 

 explorers, and it is astonishing how much more information may be ob- 

 tained from a single expedition of an intelligent tourist, than from the 

 periodical emigration and return of the seamen of commercial Europe. 



