OCEANIC CIRCULATION. 227 



c distinguished savant,' the ' eminent geographer,' and 

 ' the other physical geographers,' that for a moment his 

 confidence deserts him, and instead of applying afresh 

 to them, directly, the lash which has indirectly reached 

 them, he proceeds thus mildly : 'In oux belief, of which 

 we shall presently explain the grounds, the real Gulf 

 Stream has no more to do with the inflow into the 

 polar area than with the ripening of oranges at Naples, 

 or the maintenance of Catholicism at Eome, so that, 

 even if its current were to be entirely diverted by the 

 cutting of a wide channel through the Isthmus of Pan- 

 ama, not only would the climate of the British Islands 

 suffer very little, but a north-easterly stream of warm 

 water . . . would still mollify the severity of polar 

 cold, and help to render Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla 

 accessible to arctic voyagers.' This belief, in which I 

 cordially concur, would seem to afford excellent reason 

 for rejecting the name Gulf Stream whenever the course 

 of the stream shall thus have been diverted, but scarcely 

 seems to justify the disuse of the name under the actual 

 circumstances ; still less would it appear to afford good 

 grounds for using such hard words as ' shallow non- 

 sense ' and ' stupidity.' If the course of the Danube 

 were intercepted in Baden, it is tolerably certain that 

 a mighty river would continue to flow past Vienna, 

 Belgrade, and Ismail to the Black Sea ; nor would the 

 noble river which flows northward through Germany be 

 much reduced though the Ehine were diverted in the 

 Grisons : yet geographers are satisfied to call these 

 rivers the Danube' and the Ehine, not adopting new 



Q 2 



