THE OCEAN. 



330 



Gale in the Pacific. 



which lasted with unabated violence for two days. During the greater part of the gale 

 the wind was fair, but blowing so hard, and with so mountainous a sea, that we could 

 make no use of it, nor show even the smallest stitch of sail, without its being instantly 

 blown to rags." 



The temperature of the ocean has occupied the attention of many physical inquirers. 

 But little is known respecting it at a considerable depth, owing to the difficulty of experi- 

 mentalising, though the probability is, that at great depths it is much the same under 

 every latitude. The temperature at the surface is of most importance, in relation to 

 physical climate, because the superior stratum of the ocean is the only one that has an 

 immediate influence upon the state of the atmosphere. As water is a slow conductor of 

 heat, the temperature of the sea is more uniform than that of the air, and is not subject 

 to those great and rapid changes that mark the latter. During Humboldt's passage from 

 New Spain to Corunna, between the 9th of June arid the 15th of July 1799, he made the 

 following observations : 



From Corunna, where his voyage commenced, to the mouth of the Tagus, he found the 

 water to vary but little in its temperature, but from 39 of latitude to 10, the increment 

 was very sensible, and constant, though not always uniform. Chorucca, who crossed the 

 equator, in his voyage to the Straits of Magelhaen, in W. long. 25, found the maximum of 

 the temperature of the Atlantic at its surface in 6 north latitude ; Quevedo, in 20 2' 

 south; Perrins in 15' north; and Humboldt observed the maximum, at the east of the 

 Galipago islands, in 2 27' north. These variations are probably due to accidental 

 causes, such as long calms, temporary changes in the direction of the currents, or tern- 



