21 



others. If the prevailing winds of these latitudes were south- 

 easterly instead, very little of this genial warmth would come to us : 

 Labrador and the coasts adjoining would get it, and the remarkable 

 differences of climate between this country and Labrador (places 

 in the same latitudes) would be reversed; we should be hard 

 bound in ice and snow, whilst there, they would have mild, soft 

 open winters : this would be the chosen home of tobogganing ; and 

 the mud pies, dear to childhood, would be relegated to North 

 America. 



A current of exactly the same nature as the Gulf Stream pro- 

 duces an exactly similar effect in the Pacific, and through the 

 intermediate agency of south-west winds carries to Vancouver's 

 Island and the Oregon Coast soft humid warmth during the winter 

 months, while the opposite shores of Kamtchatka are hard frozen 

 and buried in snow. 



Some of you may perhaps think that this estimate of the 

 climatic importance of ocean currents is exaggerated; that hot 

 Avinds off the land also produce very marked effects. That hot 

 winds do blow off heated lands is certain enough ; but in point of 

 fact, their heat is very soon dispersed, and their climatic effect is 

 inconsiderable. The best known of all hot winds is the Medi- 

 terranean Sirocco, which blows every now and then from the Great 

 Sahara. It is excessively disagreeable : whilst it lasts, it makes 

 life a burden in places exposed to its influences, but it very soon 

 loses its characteristics. In Malta and in Sicily, it is very 

 offensive ; but by the time it reaches the coast of France, it is 

 hamiless enough. It has indeed been accredited with improving 

 the climate of Switzerland and of reducing the Glaciers, once so 

 enormous, to their present relatively " pigmy " proportions. Tliis, 

 however, is a mistake. The pre-historic glaciers, whose giant size 

 is attested by their existing moraines, belonged to the general 

 epoch, and were not an isolated phenomenon, depending on a Medi- 

 African sea ; and the recession of the glaciers has absolutely nothing 

 to do with the Sirocco. The wind that does sometimes act on 

 the mountain snow is the extension of the south-west wind, which 

 comes to Switzerland moist and warm with the moisture and 

 warmth of the Gulf Stream, throws down its moisture on the 



