358 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA, AND ITS METEOROLOGY. 



barometer off Cape Horn was pointed out"' as long as 1834. It 

 was considered an anomaly peculiar to the regions of Cape 

 Horn. It is now ascertained by the comparison of 6455 obser- 

 vations on the polar side of 40" south, and about 90,000 in all 

 other latitudes, that the depression is not peculiar to the Cape 

 Horn regions, but that it is general and alike in all parts of the 

 austral seas, as the following table, compiled from the log-books 

 of the Observatory by Lieutenants Warley and Young, shows : — 



Barometric Table. 

 Mean Height of the Barometer as observed between 



071. Barometer at the jpoles. — These are the observed heights; 

 for the want of data, no corrections have been applied to them ; 

 and for the want of numbers sufficient to give correct means, they 

 lack that uniformity which larger numbers would doubtless give. 

 They show, however, most satisfactorily, that a low barometer is 

 not peculiar to Cape Horn regions alone ; they show that it is 

 common to all high southern latitudes ; and other observations 

 (§ 362) show that it is peculiar to these and not to northern lati- 

 tudes. Projecting on a diagram A, with parallels of latitude and 

 the barometric scale as ordinates and abscissae, a curve S, which 

 ^Ndll best represent the observations (§ 670), and continuing it to 

 the south pole — also projecting another curve N, which will best 

 represent the observations (§ 362) on the polar side of 40° N., 

 and continuing it to the north pole — we discover that if the 

 barometric pressure in polar latitudes continue to decrease for 



* American Journal of Science, vol. xxvi. p. 54 (1834). 



