Hot and Thermal Springs. S97 



great depths could never fall below the minimum temperature 

 of the air. The temperatures 46°.4 and 44<°.5, observed in great 

 depths in tropical seas, could then not be accounted for, as in 

 such climates the temperature of the air never falls below 65°.5 

 to 68°. But if inferior currents flow from the poles to the 

 equator, in the manner of the well-known stream which run^ 

 from the Cape towards the coasts of Brazil and the Gulph of 

 Mexico, we must no longer be astonished at the low tempera- 

 tures observed in low latitudes. * 



The floating ice-bergs in the polar seas, which, according to 

 the corroborative accounts of the whale-fishers and northern na- 

 vigators, even in a calm, travel southward, seem also in certain 

 seasons to assist in the depression of the temperature of the sea 

 in low latitudes, f 



* On these currents see Guy-Lussac, Annal. de Chim. et de Phys., vols. vi. 

 and vii. 1837; Lamarche, ibid. vol. v. ; and Chladni, in Gilbert's Annalen, 

 vol. Ixii. p. 133 ; Barrow, in the Quart. Rev. Feb. 1818. No. 35 ; John 

 Davy, Edin. Phil. Jour. vol. xiii., and Von Humboldt's Reise. English edi- 

 tion, vol. i. p. 63. 



+ Will. Scoresby jun., in the Wernerian Society, 1815, and Barrow, Quart. 

 Rev. as above. In Davis's Straits where they are exceedingly numerous, 

 they always travel towards the south, extending without the straits to an al- 

 most incredible distance, and are found in great numbers on the shallows 

 about Newfoundland, and have been met with in lat. 40° more than 2100 

 nautical miles from the place of their origin. The whale-fishers are not un- 

 frequently enclosed by them and carried away to S. W. Scoresby relates 

 that ships have often been driven from the usual places for whale-fishing in 78° 

 and 80° N. Lat. and a few degrees of E. Long, in a south-westerly direction into 

 lat. 62% and longitude 30° W. of Greenwich, and have still continued to be 

 borne along. In the Autumn of 1815, the Greenland traders returning from 

 the whale-fishery, brought news that the immeasurable plains of ice which 

 had been amassing for the last 400 years on the coast of Greenland, were 

 beginning to break up, and to drift towards the south ; in the succeeding 

 years this report was confirmed by several vessels, which, on their return 

 to England from the West Indies, North America, and Newfoundland, had met 

 with great fields of ice and lofty icebergs, floating southwards. From lati- 

 tude 4C°.5 to 40°, they continued to be encountered by vessels; indeed, in 

 the summer of 1818, they even proceeded as far as Cuba (22° N. Lat.). In 

 the southern hemisphere, floating ice mountains are also met with in extra, 

 ordinarily low latitudes— in latitude 44° and even 30°. See PhiL Trans, for 

 1830, Part I. p. 117- 



