§ 150, 151. GULF STREAM, CLIMATES, AND COMMERCE. 49 



CHAPTER III. 



§ 150-191. — INFLUENCE OF THE GULF STREAM UPON CLIMATES 



AND COMMERCE. 



150. Modern ingenuity has suggested a beautiful mode of 

 How the washin;^- warming houscs in winter. It is done by means 



ton Observatory ia^ rm/' ti -it 



warmed. 01 hot watci. Ihe lumace and the caldron are 



sometimes placed at a distance from the apartments to be warmed. 

 It is so at the Observatory. In this case, pipes are used to con- 

 duct the heated water from the caldron under the superintendent's 

 dwelling over into one of the basement rooms of the Observatory, 

 a distance of one hundred feet. These pipes are then flared out 

 so as to present a large cooling surface; after which they are 

 united into one again, through which the water, being now cool- 

 ed, returns of its own accord to the caldron. Thus cool water is 

 returning all the time and flowing in at the bottom of the caldron, 

 while hot water is continually flowing out at the top. The ven- 

 tilation of the Observatory is so arranged that the circulation of 

 the atmosphere through it is led from this basement room, where 

 the pipes are, to all other parts of the building ; and in the process 

 of this circulation, the warmth conveyed by the water to the base- 

 ment is taken thence by the air and distributed over all the 

 rooms. Now, to compare small things with great, we have, in 

 the warm waters which are confined in the Gulf of Mexico, just 

 such a heating apparatus for Great Britain, the North Atlantic, 

 and Western Europe. 



151. The furnace is the torrid zone ; the Mexican Gulf and 

 An anaio-y showing Caribbean Sea are the caldrons; the Gulf Stream 

 Ss^'t^mperatu!?^ IS the couductiug pipc. From the Grand Banks of 

 in Europe. Ncwfoundland to the shores of Europe is the base- 

 ment — the hot-air chamber — in which this pipe is flared out so as 

 to present a large cooling surface. Here the circulation of the 

 atmosphere is arranged by nature ; it is from west to east ; conse- 

 quently it is such that the warmth thus conveyed into this warm- 

 air chamber of mid-ocean is taken up by the genial west winds, 

 and dispensed, in the most benign manner, throughout Great 



D 



