6 CUB HERITAGE THE SEA 



charge of the weather even for one week to the most 

 gifted of the sons of men? Sometimes, it is true, a 

 sudden influx of icebergs, released from their Arctic 

 prison, will invade the North Atlantic in early summer 

 and refrigerate the mild west wind so severely that it 

 descends upon our shores scarcely less frigid than the 

 blast from its opposite quarter, edged with bitter- 

 ness from the icy Kussian steppes. Undoubtedly in 

 such a case individuals will suffer. The patient 

 agriculturist may see in a night all his hopes of a 

 good crop brought to naught, and difficult indeed will 

 it be to convince him of the general benefit conferred 

 by this bitter blast when he is smarting under the 

 knowledge of his own particular ruin. Weaklings, 

 too young and old who, lured from protection by 

 the geniality of the weather, have ventured farther 

 than their wont, are stricken and die, to the sorrow of 

 those to whom they were dear, but to the undoubted 

 benefit of the race. When the wise man said that it 

 was the hard grey climate that made hard grey 

 Englishmen, he did not incur the obloquy of saying 

 that the Englishmen who were neither hard nor 

 grey, and could not become so, must be eliminated 

 by the inexorable forces of Nature; in other words, 

 they must die early and die often. No, he left that 

 to be inferred, and unfortunately it is too often for- 

 gotten with many other things that should be 

 remembered. 



The foregoing remarks, however, only apply to 

 the often broken British summer, dependent as it is 

 entirely upon the steadiness of the west winds and the 

 Gulf Stream. Many hard and unjust things have been 

 said about it, mostly untrue, and generally by people 



