18 EXPLORATIONS, WESTERN ATLANTIC, STEAMER BACHE, 1914. 



the slope of the Bahama Bank. The temperature sections along this 

 line (fig. 5, 6) show that practically the entire coohng from the sur- 

 face downward takes place in the upper 1,500 meters; and below 

 about 1,800 meters the west-east dip is still evident. The profile 

 illustrates sufficiently the contrast between the Antilles water on 

 the one hand and the Florida current water on the other, for while 

 the latter is even warmer than the former on the surface, water 

 colder than 10° comes much nearer the surface in it, what we may call 

 an entire oceanic section being compressed into a channel only some 

 700 meters deep, and the banking up of cold bottom water on the left- 

 hand, side is much more extreme in the Florida than in the Antilles 

 current. 



Stations 



Fig. 12. 



-Salinity profile of the upper 1,800 meters, Chesapeake Bay to station 10161, and from a point 130 

 miles south of the latter to Bermuda. 



Sahnity (fig. 16) agrees very well with temperature along this 

 profile down to 1,200 meters. Thus, the curve of SG^'/oo is almost 

 exactly parallel with that of 15°; the curves of 35.5^/oo and 

 35.3^00 roughly, though not exactly, parallel with 10° and 5° 

 temperatures, respectively. Consequently, below 500 meters the two 

 combined show a mass of warm water of high salinity south of Ber- 

 muda; a band of cool, comparatively fresh water at station 101 85; 

 next, a second warm salt mass about 300 miles southeast of Bermuda, 

 followed by a general coohng and decline of salinity as far as the 

 l,SOO-meter contour on the slope, where there is a third well-marked 

 warm salt band. Between the 500-meter level and the surface the 

 general trend of the salinity curves is different, the saltest water as a 

 whole lying northwest of the Bahama Bank, where there is a layer 

 about 300 meters thick with salinity above 36.57oo- Farther 



