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GEOGRAPHICAL EXPLORATIONS AND DISCOVERIES IN 1871. 



did not reach England till the winter of 1871. 

 Mr. Shelverton and Captain Melville, two of the 

 ablest officers connected with the geographi- 

 cal surveys of India, succumbed to the deadly 

 malaria to which they were exposed in their 

 labors, in the early part of 1871. 



Turning, now, to the subject of geographi- 

 cal discovery, we notice that at the meeting of 

 the Royal Geographical Society, January 9, 

 1871, Dr. William B. Carpenter, widely known 

 as perhaps the most eminent of living physiolo- 

 gists, and also distinguished as a physical 

 geographer, read before the Society a paper 

 "On the Gibraltar Current, the Gulf Stream, 

 and the General Oceanic Circulation," in which 

 he combated with great plausibility, but on 

 theoretic grounds mainly, the idea that the 

 Gulf Stream exercised any considerable influ- 

 ence in modifying the temperature of "Western 

 Europe, or that the Kuro-Siwo (the Gulf 

 Stream of the Pacific) performed any similar 

 office for the western coasts of America. He 

 attributed these modifications of temperature, 

 if they existed, to the influence of the oceanic 

 circulation generally. The paper was one in- 

 dicating profound and protracted researches, 

 but its conclusions will not be hastily accepted, 

 and have, indeed, already provoked consider- 

 able debate. It is obvious that the question 

 thus evolved can only be settled by long and 

 patient experiments and observations in all 

 the principal seas and oceans of the world. 



Late in the autumn of 1871, Prof. Peirce, 

 the Superintendent of the Coast Survey, having 

 occasion to send a new steamer, the Hassler, 

 for the coast-survey service, around Cape Horn 

 to operate henceforward on the Pacific coast, 

 gave an invitation to Prof. Agassiz and a com- 

 pany of naturalists, to make the voyage in the 

 interests of science, and return either by the 

 overland or Panama route. Prof. Agassiz, 

 who had long desired to examine the ichthy- 

 ology of the South Atlantic and Pacific with 

 reference to their bearing on fossil ichthyology, 

 at once accepted the offer, and a corps of natu- 

 ralists was organized and sailed in December. 

 This expedition, though primarily undertaken 

 in the interests of zoology, may be expected to 

 accomplish much also for geography. Indeed, 

 the reports already returned from the expedition 

 show that it has made a good beginning in this 

 direction. In addition to oft-repeated sound- 

 ings with a new apparatus, which revealed to 

 the observers the depth and the character of 

 the ocean-bed along their route, the expedi- 

 tion spent several days in a very careful exam- 

 ination of the Sea of Sargasso, and not only 

 ascertained, more satisfactorily than had pre- 

 viously been done, the botanical relations of the 

 marine plants that constitute that vast bed of 

 ocean vegetation, but discovered many speci- 

 mens of a nest-building fish which makes its 

 home among this congeries of sea-weed. They 

 also made observations on the delta of the 

 Amazons, and in the bays of Pernambuco and 

 Rio Janeiro. 



While speaking of the world of waters, we 

 may, with propriety, allude to the very care- 

 ful survey and soundings made, by order of 

 the British Admiralty, across the English 

 Channel and the Straits of Dover at different 

 points, to ascertain the character of the bed 

 of the channel, and the practicability of laying 

 a tubular subway or of constructing a tunnel 

 across the straits to connect England with 

 France. The result of their observations 

 was that the bed of the channel and straits 

 was, to a very considerable depth, composed 

 of chalk, and that the sea-bottom was in 

 some places quite soft, in others hard and 

 rough from the chert or flints which were 

 mingled with the chalk, and which, in some 

 places, had made sharp and rough ridges from 

 the working out of the chalk. This condition 

 of the bed was deemed unfavorable to the 

 laying of a tubular subway, though not to a 

 tunnel. 



The bed of the Atlantic Ocean has been 

 pretty fully explored in the many-times-re- 

 peated lines of soundings across it for the pur- 

 pose of ascertaining the best route for laying 

 telegraphic cables, and in the longitudinal 

 soundings from the latitude of England to 

 that of the Cape of Good Hope, and it is an 

 interesting fact that none of these soundings 

 indicate a depth of quite three thousand 

 fathoms, or eighteen thousand feet. The 

 soundings of the Coast Survey, and of the Hass- 

 ler expedition, as well as those pertaining to 

 the Gulf Stream, which is now in process of 

 careful exploration, will leave little to be de- 

 sired in regard to the topography of the bed 

 of the Atlantic. The Mediterranean Sea and 

 the Indian Ocean have also been very thor- 

 oughly sounded, but little or nothing has been 

 done in this direction in the vast expanse of 

 the Pacific Ocean. It is not improbable that 

 depths may be found at some points which 

 shall correspond more nearly to the lofty 

 mountain-summits of the Andes, and possibly 

 to the still loftier peaks of the (Himalayas. 



This leads us to consider the progress made 

 in EXPLOEATION OF THE ARCTIC OCEAN during 

 the year, as well as the results, not hitherto 

 fully chronicled, of the previous year's explo- 

 rations. The full report, with maps and illus- 

 trations, of the second German Arctic Expedi- 

 tion in the Germania and Hansa, in 1869-'70, 

 was published during the year; but while it is 

 deeply interesting, and its contributions to 

 zoological, meteorological, and geological sci- 

 ence are important, it adds very little, and 

 that incidentally, to our knowledge of geog- 

 raphy beyond what was given in the ANNUAL 

 CYCLOPAEDIA for the year 1870. Something 

 was, indeed, accomplished in the survey and 

 exploration of the eastern coast of Greenland: 

 the supposed discoveries of Clavering and Sa- 

 bine were found to have been erroneously lo- 

 cated, an immense fiord or bay indenting the 

 coast in 73 8' north latitude, and stretching far 

 into the interior of Greenland, had escaped the 



