72 Temperature Sections Surveyed. 



tribution of temperature, and a line drawn between the two 

 stations will divide this portion of the Atlantic into an eastern 

 area, in which the polar current predominates, and into a 

 western area, where the equatorial current has the upper hand. 



A glance at the chart will show that the Azores are placed 

 in the direct continuation of the axis of Davis Strait, and there 

 can be little doubt but that the sudden rise of the isotherms 

 between Station 69 and Station 72 is due to a cold current, a 

 branch of the Labrador current. The latter, as it arrives off the 

 great bank of Newfoundland, spreads out like a fan — one branch, 

 running in a south-westerly direction, forms the cold current of 

 the coasts of Nova Scotia and the United States; the other 

 branch, a south-easterly continuation of the original current, 

 flows straight towards the Azores, to the westward of which 

 islands it forms a powerful current more than a hundred miles 

 broad. One part of this current probably runs down along the 

 western slope of the plateau, while another part sweeps over 

 the plateau in a south-easterly direction, carrying along with it 

 a portion of the equatorial current, and thus composing that 

 mixture of cold and warm water which we find in the channel 

 between the Azores and Madeira, and which flows down outside 

 the Canaries and the Cape de Verde Islands (Plates 8 and 9, 

 Curves Figs. 3 and 4). 



A line drawn between Newfoundland and the Azores passes 

 over the area where the equatorial and the polar currents en- 

 counter each other, both coming out of the conflict profoundly 

 altered in their constitution. To the northward of this line 

 we find the equatorial current flowing in a north-easterly 

 direction towards the Fseroe Islands, sending off branches into 

 Davis Strait and towards Iceland on one side, and towards the 

 coast of Portugal, the Bay of Biscay, and the western shores of 

 the British Islands on the other side. In this northern part of 

 the North Atlantic the equatorial current generally assumes the 



