§ 81, 82. THE GULF STREAM. 23 



and constant currents of the sea — the great arteries and jugulars 

 through which its circulation is conducted. In every instance, 

 and regardless of winds, those currents that are warm flow toward 

 the poles, those that are cold set toward the equator. And this 

 they do, not by the force of the winds, but in spite of them, and 

 by the force of those very agencies that make the winds to blow. 

 They flow thus by virtue of those efforts which the sea is contin- 

 ually making to restore that equilibrium to its waters which heat 

 and cold, the forces of evaporation, and the secretion of its inhab- 

 itants are everlastingly destroying. 



81. If the w^inds make the upper ^ what makes the under and 

 The supremacy of couutcr currcuts ? This qucstiou is of itscif cuough 

 the winds disputed. ^^ impeach that supremacy of the winds upon the 

 currents, which the renowned philosopher, with whom I am so 

 unfortunate as to differ, traveled so far out of his way to vin- 

 dicate." 



82. That the winds do make currents in the sea no one will 

 The Bonifaccio cur- havc the hardihood to deny ; but currents that arc 

 ^'^"*' born of the wdnds are as unstable as the winds ; un- 

 certain as to time, place, and direction, they are sporadic and 

 ephemeral ; they are not the constant currents such as have been 

 already enumerated. Admiral Smyth, in his valuable memoir on 

 the Mediterranean (p. 162), m»entions that a continuance in the Sea 

 of Tuscany of '■^ gusty gales^'' from the southwest has been known 

 to raise its surface no less than twelve feet above its ordinary 

 level. This, he says, occasions a strong surface drift through the 

 Strait of Bonifaccio. But in this we have nothing like the Gulf 

 Stream ; no deep and narrow channel-way to conduct these waters 

 off like a miniature river even in that sea, but a mere surface 

 flow, such as usually follows the piling up of water in any pond 

 or gulf above the ordinary level. The Bonifaccio current does 

 not flow like a " river in the sea" across the Mediterranean, but it 

 spreads itself out as soon as it passes the Straits, and, like a circle 



* "We have, perhaps, been more diiFuse on the subject of oceanic currents than the 

 nature of this article may seem to justify ; but some such detail seemed necessary to 

 vindicate to the winds their supremacy in the production of currents, without calling 

 in the feeble and ineflfective aid of heated water, or the still more insignificant in- 

 fluence of insect secretion, which has been pressed into the sendee as a cause of buoy- 

 ancy in the regions occupied by coral formations." — Art. Go, Phys. Geography, 

 Encyc. Brit. 



