Temperature of the Terrestrial Globe. 17 



temperature, in the latitude of Paris, = ll°.7 C, and we shall not 

 err much if we admit it for the whole ocean to be 12 degrees* Thus, 

 in supposing that all the cold water which goes from the poles tow- 

 ards the equator may be equal to all the rest of the mass of the 

 ocean, the temperature of the bottom should be at +7° C. But 

 this portion of the polar water is not perhaps x^n °^ l ^ e rest °f the 

 ocean. Soundings that have been made along the whole coast of the 

 North Sea which borders Siberia indicate only a very small depth. 

 This water must, in order to get to the equator, proceed the distance 

 of one thousand seven hundred and fifty leagues, with a prodigious 

 slowness, and consequently lose a large share of its cold on the route. 

 The cooling then in one year would hardly amount to ^ tV o °f a de- 

 gree, and sixteen thousand eight hundred years would be required 

 to absorb the 7 degrees in question. But during this lapse of time, 

 the incandescent globe would have repaired this loss, and the more 

 certainly as the limits whence the heat departs are found to be six 

 thousand fathoms nearer the incandescent surface, and the trans- 

 mission of heat would be the more rapid, as the water arriving at the 

 poles would be the colder. Thus, although we cannot deny that the 

 water at the surface of the polar regions, being colder than that at the 

 bottom of the great ocean, would sink and move along the bottom of 

 the sea towards the equator, yet it is not less true that this water can- 

 not there produce much refrigeration, still less reduce, in the course 

 of ages, the original temperature of the bottom of the sea to zero, 

 and consequently cannot resolve the problem of the low temperature 

 of the bottom of the ocean. 



M. Fourier has again recourse to the temperature of the highest 

 point of water without my being able to conceive how this considera- 

 tion can be favorable to the hypothesis which he has adopted. Let 

 this temperature be equal to -f 3°.75 Q my as a medium between the 



experiments of MM. Hallstrone and Muncke, which appear to be 

 the latest and most exact. But M. Lenz has already found this 

 temperature at four hundred and fifty fathoms depth ; whence it 

 would follow that the rest of the depth of the ocean (five thousand 

 five hundred and fifty fathoms) would have a less density, and that, 

 in consequence, the superior warmer beds would fall to the bottom 

 and warm it, not cool it. But there is still another consideration, 

 this maximum of density does not exist in sea water ; which M. 

 Fourier appears to have been ignorant of. The temperature at which 

 this maximum takes place, is, as I have shown in my Grundriss der 



Vol. XXVI.— No. I. 3 



