THE GULF STREAM. 23 



sentially accordant with those of Lenz. " * This is per- 

 haps as far as in a work of this kind it would be 

 desirable to follow this branch of the subject though 

 without a few words shortly describing 1 the mighty 

 forces which these great stream-currents represent it 

 might perhaps appear incomplete. 



Their importance in modifying climates is well known ; 

 every schoolboy being aware that to the influence of 

 one of them generally known as the Gulf Stream 

 the mildness of our English climate is supposed to be 

 principally due. 



But the gigantic proportions of these great ocean 

 rivers are perhaps less generally realized; though in 

 poinf of fact the great rivers of the terrestrial world 

 are dwarfed by them into absolute insignificance, for 

 the largest of them is no more to be compared to one 

 of these oceanic currents, than the tiny stream from 

 the spout of a tea-pot is comparable to the volume 

 of a first-rate river. These mid- ocean currents can in 

 fact only be likened to moving aquatic continents, 

 continually forcing their way through the liquid ex- 

 panse of the mighty deep. 



The celebrated American hydrographer, the late 

 Lieutenant Maury, U.S.N., thus describes the onward 

 flow of the Gulf Stream in the opening sentences of 

 his world-renowned work, " The Physical Geography 

 of the Sea:" 



"There is a river in the ocean. In the severest droughts 

 it never fails, and in the mightiest floods it never overflows. 

 Its banks and bottom are of cold water, while its current is 

 of warm. The Gulf of Mexico is its fountain, and its mouth 

 is in the arctic seas. There is in the world no other such 



* Encycl. Brit., 9th edit., Vol. in., p. 22. 



