THE GULF STREAM. 21 



mena of tlie sea, are there none wlio will make deep-sea tempera- 

 tures a speciality? They would no doubt prove as instructive 

 and as useful too as deep-sea soundings have been and are. 



68. Lieutenant Brooker, in the " Hancock," has obtained sound- 

 -specimeus from the I'^gs iu the North Pacific from the depth of 3300 

 depth of 19,800 feet, fathoms, with specimens both of the ooze and the 

 water at the bottom. These have been sent to Professor Ehrenberg 

 of Berlin, for microscopic exammation. He has not completed his 

 study of these treasm-es, but he already reports the discovery in 

 tJiem of more than one hundred new species of animalculse. 



CHAPTEE II. 



§ 70-147. THE GULF STREAM. 



70. There is a river in the ocean: in the severest droughts 

 Its colour. it never fails, and in the mightiest floods it never 

 overflows ; its banks and its bottom are of cold water, while its 

 current is of warm ; it takes its rise in the G-ulf of Mexico, and 

 empties into Arctic seas ; this mighty river is the Gulf Stream. 

 There is in the world no other such majestic flow of waters. Its 

 current is more rapid than the Mississippi or the Amazon, and its 

 volume more than a thousand times greater. Its waters, as far out 

 from the gulf as the CaroHna coasts, are of indigo blue. They are 

 so distinctly marked that their line of junction v>'ith the common 

 sea-water may be traced by the eye. Often one half of the vessel 

 may be perceived floating in Gulf Stream water, while the other 

 half is in common water of the sea — so sharp is the line, and such 

 the want of affinity between those waters, and such, too, the reluc- 

 tance, so to speak, on the part of those of the Gulf Stream to mingle 

 with the littoral waters of the sea. 



71. At the salt-Avorks of France, and along the shores of the 

 now caused. Adriatic, where the "salines'' are carried on by the 

 process of solar evaporation, there is a series of vats or pools 

 through which the water is passed as it comes from the sea, and 

 is reduced to the briny state. The longer it is exposed to evapo- 

 ration, the Salter it grows, and the deeper is the hue of its blue, 

 until crystalhzation is about to commence, when the nov/ deep- 

 blue Avater puts on a reddish tint. Now the water of the Gulf 

 Stream is Salter (§ 102) than the littoral water of the sea through 



