EFFECT OF THE GULF-STEEAM OX CLIMATE. 71 



perceiving that tliey liave changed their country, and often push 

 their adventurous voyages to the Azores and even to the coasts of 

 Iceland ; the southern birds mount also towards the north in the 

 warm stream of air reposing on the current. The animals of northern 

 seas, on the contrary, are kept prisoners in the glacial ocean, and the 

 right whales, says Maury, recoil before the Gulf-stream, as before " a 

 barrier of flame.'' The total warmth of the current would sufiice, if it 

 was centred in a single point, to fuse mountains of iron and cause a 

 river of metal as mighty as the Mississippi to flow forth. It would 

 suffice also to raise from a winter, to a constant summer temperature, 

 the entire column of air which rests on France and the British Isles. 

 But, though it is spread over enormous spaces to the west and north 

 of Europe, the Gulf-stream does nevertheless exercise a preponderating 

 influence upon the climate of this part of the Old World. Owing to the 

 "warmth of its waters the lakes of the Fiiroe and Shetland Isles never 

 freeze during winter ; Great Britain is enveloped in fogs, as in an 

 immense vapour-bath, and the myrtle grows on the shores of Ireland, 

 the " emerald isle of the seas," under the same latitude as Labrador, 

 that land of snow and ice. In green Erin, an island privileged in so 

 many respects, the western coasts (the first land which the Gulf- 

 stream encounters after crossing the Atlantic) enjoy a temperature 

 two degrees higher than that of the eastern coasts. In spite of the 

 path of the sun, it is on an average as warm in Ireland under the 52nd 

 degree of latitude, as in the United States under the 38th degree, or 

 about 1025 miles nearer the equator. 



The Gulf-stream, which conveys the tropical warmth to the temper- 

 ate countries of Europe, very often serves as a high-road for tempests. 

 Hence the names of weather -hreeder and storm-ldng, which have been 

 given to this current.* The movements of the atmospheric ocean 

 and those of the ocean of waters occur in such complete parallelism 

 that one would be tempted to regard them as one and the same 

 phenomenon in the ensemble of aerial and marine currents. f Thus 

 the Gulf-stream seems to be for the winds as it really is for the waters, 

 the great medium between the old and new worlds. It carries to the 

 seas at the north of Europe the salinity of the Gulf of Mexico ; it 

 bears with it the warmth of the tropics for the advantage of the tem- 

 perate regions, and marks the track which the torrents of electricitj'-^ 

 disengaged by the hurricanes of the Antilles, follow. It is indeed the 

 great serpent of the Scandinavian poets, which uncoils its immense 



* F. Maury, Geography of the Sea. 

 t See b?low, the chapter entitled, The Air and the Windi^. 



