64 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA, AND ITS METEOROLOGY. 



storm-find in the wide ocean can out-top that which rages along 

 the Atlantic coasts of North America. The China seas and tho 

 North Pacific may vie in the fury of their gales with this part of 

 the Atlantic, but Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope cannot 

 equal them, certainly, in frequency, nor do I believe in fury. 



1G9. Noiiliern seas more boisterous than southern. — In the ex- 

 tropical regions of the south we lack those contrasts which the 

 mountains, the deserts, the plains, the continents, and the seas 

 of the north afibrd for the production of atmospherical disturb- 

 ances. Neither have we in the southern seas such contrasts of 

 hot and cold cuiTcnts. The flow of warm water towards the 

 pole, and of polar water towards the equator, is as great — perhaps 

 if measured according to volume, is greater in the southern 

 hemisphere. But in the southern hemisphere the currents are 

 broad and sluggish ; in the northern, narrow, sharp, and strong. 

 Then we have in the north other climatic contrasts for which we 

 may search southern seas in vain. Hence, without further 

 investigation, we may infer southern seas to be less boisterous 

 than northern. 



170. Storms in the North Atlantic and Pacific. — By a like 

 reasoning we may judge the North Pacific to be less boisterous 

 than the North Atlantic ; for, though we have continental 

 climates on either side of each, and a Gulf Stream in both, yet 

 the Pacific is a very much wider sea, and its Gulf Stream is (§ 54) 

 not so warm, nor so sharp, nor so rapid; therefore the broad 

 Pacific does not, on the whole, present the elements of atmo- 

 Gpherical disturbance in that compactness which is so striking 

 in the narrow North Atlantic. 



171. Storms along their western shores. — Nevertheless, though 

 the North Pacific generally may not be so stormy as the North 

 Atlantic, we have reason to believe that meteorological agents of 

 nearly equal power are clustered along the western shores of 

 each ocean. Though the Gulf Stream of the Pacific is not so 

 hot, nor the cool littoral currents so cold, as those of our ocean 

 are, yet they lave the shores of a broader continent, and hug 

 them quite as closely as ours do. Moreover, the Japan Current, 

 with its neighbouring seas, is some 500 miles nearer to the pole 

 of maximum cold than the Gulf Stream of the Atlantic is. Great 

 prominence in the brewing of storms is to be given to the latent 

 heat which is set free in the air when vapour is condensed into 

 rain. The North Pacific being broader than the North Atlantic, 



