The Meaning of the Atlantic : 59 



Indian Oceans with the extreme southern end of the Atlantic added 

 to overwhelm an already overbalanced score. Land for human habi- 

 tation is scarce indeed. Antarctica, barren, mountainous, ice-crammed, 

 is the most prominent land mass. Australia, New Zealand, New 

 Guinea and the tip of South America with a far scattering of tiny 

 islands make up the rest. All of the land in this Water Hemisphere, 

 including uninhabited Antarctica, totals less than six per cent of the 

 land area of the world. In this whole half of the globe resources are 

 scarce, people are scarce, contacts are difficult, travel drawn out and 

 history a fragment. 



Now give the globe a half-revolution. Adjust it so that London is 

 directly under your eye. Here again the exact spot the geographer 

 would select is ofl the mouth of the Loire River in France but Lon- 

 don is easier to remember. You are now looking at the Land Hem- 

 isphere. It contains 94 per cent of the land areas of the world. It con- 

 tains by some staggering percentage practically all of the world's 

 natural resources and almost the total of all land areas lying in tem- 

 perate climate. No wonder that this one half of the world contains 

 all but a small fraction of the entire population of the world — 96 per 

 cent! 



Now as your eye runs south see how the Atlantic opens out and 

 lies as a broad channel between the four continents — Europe, Africa, 

 North and South America. 



The position of the Atlantic at the center of the earth's land mass 

 is in itself important enough to warrant our concentration on this 

 subject as individuals and as a nation. However, the outline map 

 does not tell the whole story; there are further facts that add to the 

 importance of this ocean. Perhaps the easiest way to convey these 

 facts is to ask: what do we expect of an ocean? What does it do for 

 us? What services does it perform? Does the Atlantic do these things 

 well? 



There does not appear to be any standard or generally accepted list 

 of the functions of an ocean. The oceanographers present many of 

 the facts in great detail but their approach is abstract and they do 

 not appear to be much concerned with the comprehensive utility of 

 an ocean. The following list of functions of an ocean is offered here 

 with no idea that it is authoritative or complete but only as a con- 

 venient method of presenting certain important facts: 



Collection or Drainage: The first and obvious function of an 

 ocean is to serve as an area for the collection of surplus waters that 

 the land does not use or retain. In this sense, the ocean is the desti- 



