SCOTTISH GAEDENS 



The first thing to lay to heart is that Great 

 Britain is divided, climatically, not so much into 

 north and south, as nearly all horticultural books 

 describe it, as into east and west. Certain plants 

 which perish from winter cold near London and in 

 the Midlands, flourish luxuriantly on the western 

 sections of the counties of Inverness and Ross. This 

 is usually explained as the direct influence of the 

 Gulf Stream upon the seaboard climate of the British 

 Isles. Nobody wants to speak disrespectfully of 

 the Gulf Stream ; but hydrographers have differed 

 among themselves in estimating the extent of its 

 effect upon the land temperature of Western Europe, 

 and perhaps the popular tendency has been to ex- 

 aggerate it. Issuing from the Gulf of Florida, with 

 a surface temperature of 80 F., this great current 

 of hot water flows eastward along the banks of 

 Newfoundland, whence it is separated by the cold 

 and southward flowing current of Labrador. At 

 about 40 west longitude, a well-marked branch of 

 the Gulf Stream turns north and north-westward 

 upon the coast of Greenland and is lost in Baffin's 

 Bay. The main current divides again at about 

 25 W., 47 N., the greater moiety bending southward 

 to form the North African current, which laves the 

 shores of Portugal and Morocco, finally turning west- 

 ward off Cape Verde and heading back to the 

 Carribean Sea. What is left of the original stream 

 holds a north-eastward course towards the western 

 shores of Northern Europe, but it has parted with 



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