318 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
be naturalists. Without entering into a discussion on ocean 
circulation, which would occupy too much space, we must, in the 
first instance, direct our thoughts to the equatorial regions of 
the Atlantic, where the prevailing and constant winds propel the 
warm water of the tropics against the long breakwater of the two 
Americas. Finding no loophole of escape in that direction, this 
mass of water naturally seeks an outlet towards the point of least 
resistance, which is across the North Atlantic, through the gap 
between Iceland and the north of Scotland, along the western 
coast of Norway, washing the shores of Spitsbergen, and finally 
entering the vast refrigerator of the Polar Basin. The influx of 
this enormous body of heated water necessitates a corresponding 
outflow of colder water, and we find that such exists, the main 
current passing south along the east coast of Greenland, bearing 
on its surface the decaying ice of the Polar floes. Sweeping 
around Cape Farewell, part of this current is deflected along the 
western shore of South Greenland, then joining with the southerly 
setting current of Baffin Bay and Smith Sound, the great mass of 
cold water, laden with icebergs, moves towards the shores of 
Newfoundland and Labrador and the coasts of New England. 
Though somewhat of a digression, it is essential that the effects 
of the warm north-setting and the cold south-setting currents 
should be duly considered, otherwise no correct appreciation can 
be obtained of the Natural History of the Polar Regions; and when 
we reflect that the south-western shore of Spitsbergen, in the 
seventy-seventh parallel, is during the summer almost free from ice, 
whilst the east coast of Greenland, in the latitude of Bergen, is 
blockaded with drift-ice, and its glaciers protrude into the sea, it 
appears hardly necessary to invoke a change in the earth’s axis to 
account for a glacial epoch having existed in Great Britain. 
On the 28th June, a month after leaving Portsmouth, we sighted 
the coast of Greenland, somewhere about the vicinity of Cape 
Desolation, and for the next few days continued our course along 
its shores, keeping just outside of the drift-ice from the east coast. 
Whenever we weared the shore, Kittiwakes, Arctic Terns, and 
Iceland Gulls were numerous, and Seals were common on the 
drift-ice. In lat. 62° N. we observed a single Walrus. A Fulmar 
captured at this time had its stomach filled with the horny 
mandibles of a small cephalapod. 
On one occasion we dredged, in thirty fathoms, on a bank lying 
