ADDRESS. lix 
so that the united labours of the two greatest naval and commercial nations 
of the world may be combined, with the least practicable delay, in promoting 
the interests of navigation.” 
Amongst the most valuable results which the Physical Sciences may expect 
to obtain from this extensive system of nautical observation, we may reckon 
the construction of charts of the isothermals of the surface of the ocean cor- 
responding to every month in the year, similar to Dove’s monthly isothermals 
of the temperature of the air; and a knowledge of the normal condition as 
well as the abnormal variations, with their special causes and effects, of the 
great Gulf-stream which connects the shores of the Old and New World, 
and in its normal effects is influential in many ways on the climate of the 
United States and Western Europe, whilst its abnormal effects are principally 
known, so far as we are yet aware, by the peculiarities of climate they 
oceasionally produce on the European side of the Atlantic. Of the extent, 
depth, and limits of this remarkable current in ordinary and extraordinary 
years we are as yet very imperfectly informed. Of the zoology of the great 
tracts of ocean which are covered by its banks of: seaweed, we know nothing 
beyond the fact that they are the habitation of a countless number of oceanic 
animals,— giving rise possibly to deposits which may have distinctive 
characters from littoral deposits or from those of marine estuaries. But 
doubtless, we can now estimate only a very small part of the advantages 
which Terrestrial Physics as well as Hydrography and Navigation would 
derive from the concurrent exertions of the two great maritime nations in 
the way that has been pointed out. 
The analogy of the configuration of the land and sea on the north of the 
continents of Asia and America, has for some time past caused an opinion 
to be entertained that the sea on the north of the Parry Islands might be as 
open as it is known to be throughout the year in the same latitude on the 
north of the Siberian Islands. The expectation that Wellington Strait might, 
as the continuation of Barrow’s Strait, prove a channel of communication 
from the Atlantic into that part of the Polar Ocean, has been considerably 
strengthened in the last year by the discoveries which we owe to the hardi- 
_ hood and intrepidity of our merchant seamen. The access to the Polar 


covery or of scientific research, are amongst the few geographical problems 
of high interest which remain to be solved; and we may confidently look 
for a solution, in the direction at least that has been adverted to, by the 
| up the discovered traces of Sir John Franklin’s vessels. 
The success which the Kew Observatory Committee have had in their un- 
_ dertaking to make Standard Thermometers, encourages us to hope that they 
_ will be equally successful in the endeavour in which they are now engaged 
_ to introduce a greater degree of precision in the construction of meteorological 
instruments generally, as well as in the more delicate kinds which are so fre- 
