HIS PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA 75 



Trade Winds; and C. Wyville Thomson, who thought 

 that Maury's theory was ambiguous, was an adherent 

 to the Herschel theory, though his colleague Carpenter 

 was of a different opinion still. "It is now known, how- 

 ever," writes Sir Willam A. Herdman,i "that the Gulf 

 Stream is not an independent phenomenon, but is a part 

 of the general system of surface circulation of the ocean, 

 a system in which the currents, diverted to the east, as 

 a result of the rotation of the earth in their course 

 northwards from the equator, flow clockwise in the North 

 Atlantic around a central, relatively calm area, the Sar- 

 gasso Sea, in which seaweeds and other floating objects 

 accumulate". 



When one considers how science develops, one theory 

 changing or giving place entirely to another as new and 

 wider research is made, such criticisms as those above 

 do not lessen at all the estimation of Maury's greatness 

 as a pioneer scientist in a comparatively new field of 

 investigation, nor do they at all rob him of the right to 

 be called the world's first great oceanographer. This 

 is the opinion of a recent authority on the science of the 

 sea, who writes, "Marine meteorology may be said to 

 date from the time of M. F. Maury, U. S. Navy, whose 

 'Physical Geography of the Sea', though out of date as 

 to facts and somewhat fantastic as to theories, remains 

 a model book of popular science, written by a man who 

 was possessed of all the knowledge of his time, and afire 

 with the enthusiasm of research". ^ 



Maury's researches in oceanography led to his con- 



^ "Founders of Oceanography", p. 175. 



2 From "Chapter I, The Air" by Hugh Robert Mill and D. Wilson Barker in 

 Science of the Sea, edited by G. Herbert Fowler for the Challenger Society, 

 1912, p. 3. 



