42 EXPLORATIONS, WESTERN ATLANTIC, STEAMER BACHE, 1914. 
Agassiz (1888). The explorations by the United States Coast and 
Geodetic Survey (Pillsbury, 1886, 1887, 1889) show that an imper- 
fect method of observation had much to do with this result, meas- 
urements with current meters at numerous stations demonstrating 
that as a whole the current was strongest on the surface, decreasing 
progressively with depth; and although it was still perceptible and 
sometimes as strong as the surface current at 130 fathoms (237 
meters), the lowest level at which readings were regularly taken, 
the rate of decrease suggested comparative stagnation below about 
250 fathoms (457 meters). Although the Bache made no actual current 
measurements, yet the difficulties encountered in using the oceano- 
graphic apparatus showed that the current ran very much more 
rapidly on the surface than in the middepths. 
Temperature, Centigrade 
5° 6 7 8 9 10°11 12 13 14 15°16 17 18 19 20°92 
_ 
NR 
ND 
LJ 
co 
RS 
= 
mr 
on 
ae sil lea li rl aus 
a acl 
300 ge 
heme & 
ANC ase ws& 
Pel giedes| | ars 
ised) Bil Oh atc “| 
SOME EE ESR Bie 
Meek |) el aalalee! S| eS 
SESE Rha Se 
fers 
lg 
Bal 
BZA 
ail 
ma 
ae at 
aly Ee 
a Nes 
eT 
ibd Ab lee betes Heteipedl 
1200 
Fie. 45.—Temperature sections off Habana, March, 1914. Bache (station 10199), ........, and off Cape San 
Antonio, May 22, 1878 (Blake) ( ). 
But densities show that the water can not be stagnant in the 
bottom of the channel, for water of 1.03 is higher at its exit than 
at its entrance, a state of instability which can only be main- 
tained in one of two ways—i. e., either by a movement of abyssal 
water from the Gulf of Mexico up the slope of the channel, or by a 
cold bottom current from the Atlantic. The last supposition has 
nothing except the persistent and still popular tendency to credit 
all cool water along our coasts to the Labrador current * to support 
it. On the contrary, as Agassiz long ago pointed out, the fact that 
the general temperature of the Straits is the same as that of the 
mass of water west of it, but considerably lower than that of the 
Atlantic water into which it. debouches, in itself seems to forbid the 
possibility that the cold water in the Straits of Florida comes from 
the north. A study of the Blake temperature sections on successive 
a.Sumner (1913); Soley (1911). 
