AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 223 



springs contains much animal and vegetable, not to say mineral 

 matter, which glide off into the ocean, and is there deposited and 

 forms guano. 



We find the ocean also instinct and alive everywhere with 

 vegetables and animals in numbers and species great beyond con- 

 ception. These come on the stage of life at periodical times, 

 from a moment to 100 years, live and all die, and are changed and 

 form other organizations. These decaying animals and vege- 

 tables form guano, and form the blue and green mud around our 

 bays, harbors and creeks and mud flats, which is a fertile guano. 



The gulf stream commences in the bay of Panama on the west 

 coast of America, and is occasioned by the combined laws of 

 attraction and motion, or by the centrifugal force of the fluids 

 and air which lie on the surface of the globe. The earth turns 

 on her axis east with a velocity of more than a thousand miles 

 an hour; on the equator, it turns so rapid that it runs away from 

 the i:)ower of attraction. The wind and water, are not carried 

 forward as fast as the surface of the earth, hence both the wind 

 and water of the ocean between the tropics form a current to the 

 westward, or rather the earth runs away from both wind and 

 water and leaves them behind; hence they both set to the west 

 forming the trade winds and the gulf stream. This is forced 

 west until it strikes the Asiatic continent; one branch turns off 

 or is directed by the eastern shore of Siam, China and Japan and 

 forms a gulf stream, which sets north and east to Kamschatka; 

 another current sets south along the eastern coast of New Hol- 

 land to New Zealand and the Polynesian Islands, but the main 

 current continues on through the East Indias into the Indian ocean 

 and through by the Cape of Good Hope; thence up to the bay of 

 Guinea and across to the Gulf of Mexico; while another large 

 current sets over from the Cape of Good Hope to South America, 

 and there it parts. One stream runs north to the West Indies 

 and the Carribean sea, and thence into the Gulf of Mexico. The 

 south stream runs below Pernambuco, up along the South 

 American coast, and inside the Falkland Islands through the 

 Straits of Magellan; thence up by the coast of Chili and Peru, 

 and then falls again into the bay of Panama to commence another 

 circuit of the globe. The north current on the American coast 

 passes along Nortli America to the coast of Europe, to Norway, 

 then east of Spitsbergen Islands; thence up the Artie ocean north 

 of Russia, which greatly modifies the climate of the Arctic shores, 

 and thence out to" Behrings Straits, and down the coast of Califor- 

 nia to the bay of Panama. It is the law of motion and attraction 



