THE WEATHER IN THE BRITISH ISLES. 38 
and notice the wonder, and beauty, and harmony of all creation, 
the more we are led to ponder and reflect with amazement on the 
works of the Lord and the operations of His hands. 
T. MarsHatw. 
Che Weather in the British Isles. 
HE British Isles enjoy an exceptional position on the earth’s 
surface, as regards temperature ; in other words, the English 
climate would be as extreme and steady both in its cold and hot 
fits, as other countries lying under the same latitude are (such 
as parts of Canada, Siberia, Central Russia, and Northern Ger- 
many), but for some peculiarities in the Ocean around it which 
affect the British Isles, but not these countries. 
This favourable condition of the temperature is owing to the 
operation of the Great Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic Ocean, 
This vast current of water after having basked under the tropical 
sun in the Gulf of Mexico and so become intensely heated, rushes 
out of that Gulf northward, until, turned aside eastward by the 
projecting cliffs of Newfoundland, glancing off, it runs across the 
Atlantic to Norway, dispensing its high temperature to the air 
and adjoining waters. 
As in this its course it passes north of Ireland and Scotland, it 
interposes a perpetual broad belt of warm sea between Great 
Britain and Iceland, and the frozen wastes of the Polar Seas. 
The benefit derived by the British Isles, in winter, is that they 
are surrounded by a sea of temperate warmth. 
In summer this ocean current arrests all the floating ice and 
icebergs that break loose and drift down from Iceland and Green- 
land, melts them and sweeps their dissolving masses away so that 
they never cross it to reach and chill our coasts: hence above 
England northward they never come down so low as the Shet- 
land Islands. 
