THE GULF STREAM. 25 



S.E. trade-winds, and it changes not with the monsoons. _ The ice- 

 bearing currents of the north oppose the winds in their course. 

 Humboldt's current has its genesis in the ex-tropical regions of the 

 south, where the " brave west winds " blow with almost if not with 

 quite the regularity of the trades, but with double their force. And 

 this current, instead of setting to the S.E. before these winds, flow.:; 

 north in spite of them. These are the main 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 cur- 

 rents that are warm flow towards the poles, those that are cold set 

 towards the equator. And this they do, not by the force of the 

 wuids, but in spite of them, and by the force of those very agencic:; 

 that make the Avinds to blow. They flow thus by virtue of those 

 efforts which the sea is continually making to restore that equili- 

 brium to its waters which heat and cold, the forces of evaporation, 

 find the secretion of its inhabitants are everlastingly destroying. 



81. If the winds make the uj^joer, what makes the tmder and 

 The supren-:acy of couuter cmTcuts ? This qucstiou is of itseK enough 

 the ^iuds disputed. ^Q impeach that supremacy of the winds upon thi' 

 cuiTents, which tlie' renovrned philosopher, wdth whom I am so 

 unfortunate as to differ, travelled so far out of his way to vindicate.'' 

 The " bottles " also dispute, in their silent way, the " supremacy oi' 

 the VN^inds " over the currents of the sea. The bottles that arc 

 throvm overboard to try currents are partly out of the water. 

 The wind has influence upon them, yet of all those— and they are 

 many — that have been thrown overboard in the trade- wind region 

 of the North Atlantic, or in the Caril^bean Sea, where ihe trade- 

 winds blow, none have been fomid to drift 'with the wind : they all 

 drift Yvith the cmTont, and nearly at right angles to the wind. 



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

 The Bonifaccio cur- havo the hardihood to deny ; but cm^rents^ that are 

 '"^"" born of the w^inds are as unstable as the winds ; mi- 

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

 meral ; they are not the constant currents such as have been already 

 enumerated. Admiral Smyth, in his valuable memoir on the 



* " We have, perhaps, been more diifase on the subject of oceanic cnrronts than 

 the nature of tiiis 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 ineffective aid of heated water, or the still more 

 insignificant influence of insect secretion, which has been pressed into^the servicv 

 as a cause of buoyancy in the regions occupied by coral formations." — Art, G,>, 

 Phys. Geography, Encyc. Brit. 



