TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E. 699 



Section E.— GEOGRAPHY. 



Pkesident of the Section — Captain W. J. L. Whakton, K.N., F.R.S. 



THURSDAY, AUGUST 9. 



The President delivered the following Address : — 



You will not be surprised if, having called upon an hydrographer to preside over 

 this Section, he takes for the subject of his review the Sea. Less apparently 

 interesting, by reason of the uniformity of its surface, than the land which raises 

 itself above the level of the waters, and with which the term geography is more 

 generally associated, the ocean has, nevertheless, received much attention of late 

 years. In Great Britain, especially, which has so long rested its position among 

 the nations upon the ■wealth which our merchant fleets bring to its shores, and 

 upon the facilities which the sea affords for communication with our numerous 

 possessions all over the globe, investigation into the mysteries, whether of its ever- 

 moving surface or of its more hidden depths, has been particularly fascinating. I 

 purpose, therefore, to attempt a brief survey of our present knowledge of its 

 physical condition. 



The very bulk of the ocean, as compared with that of the visible land, gives it 

 an importance which is possessed by no other feature on the surface of our planet. 

 Mr. John Murray, after a laborious computation, has shown that its cubical extent 

 is probably about fourteen times that of the dry land. This statement appeals 

 strongly to the imagination, and forms, perhaps, the most powerful argument in 

 favour of the view, steadily gaining ground, that the great oceans have in the 

 main existed in the form in which we now see them since the constituents of the 

 earth settled down into their present condition. 



When it is considered that the whole of the dry land would only fill up one- 

 third of the Atlantic Ocean, the enormous disproportion of the two great divisions 

 of land and sea becomes very apparent. 



The most obvious phenomenon of the ocean is the constant horizontal move- 

 ment of its surface waters, which in many parts take well-defined directions. 

 These great ocean currents have now been studied for many years, and our know- 

 ledge of them is approaching a point beyond which it is doubtful whether we shall 

 ever much advance, except in small details. For though, while indisputably the 

 waters continually move in each great area in generally the same direction, the 

 velocities vary, the limits of the different streams and drifts vary, mainly from the 

 ever-varying force and direction of the winds. 



After long hesitation and much argument, I think it may be now safely held 

 that the prime motor of the surface currents is the wind. Not, by any means, the 

 wind that may blow, and even persistently blow, over the portion of water that is 

 moving, more or less rapidly, in any direction, but the great winds which blow 

 generally from the same general quarter over vast areas. These, combined with 

 deflection from the land, settle the main surface circulation. 



I do not know if any of my hearers may have seen a very remarkable model, 



