BIGELOW: COAST WATER EXPLORATION OF 1913. 251 
voyager, have been so well described by Schott (1912), and area matter 
of such common knowledge, that it suffices to state here that water 
_ with a mean annual surface temperature below 59°, and mean salinity 
below 34%o may be so classed, as distinguished from the warm and 
saline ocean waters of the Gulf Stream. This cold, comparatively 
fresh water, which bathes the whole breadth of the continental shelf 
between Nova Scotia and Chesapeake Bay, out to about the 100 
fathom curve, except when temporarily obscured or dispossessed by 
Gulf Stream water, and which fills the Gulf of Maine, has usually 
been explained as coming from the north, or from the abyss of the 
Atlantic. According to the first of these theories, the coast water is a 
branch of a current flowing from the north and northeast. Almost 
all the ocean atlases show something of this sort; and it has been 
accepted in one form or another in almost all the textbooks on physi- 
cal geography and oceanography (for example, Maury, 1855; Reclus, 
1873; Attlmayer, 1883; Thoulet, 1904, Krummel, 1911; Schott, 1912; 
the German marine observatory, Deutsche Seewarte, 1882; the current 
chart of the U. S. Navy by Soley, 1911; and the British Admiralty 
current chart). The mere coldness of the coast water suggests a 
northern origin, as does its comparatively low salinity; while the fact, 
long ago emphasized by Verrill and others, that it supports a boreal 
littoral fauna, contrasting sharply with the warm water fauna carried 
northward in the sweep of the Gulf Stream is evidence in the same 
direction. The continuity, too, of the cold zone all along the coast 
as far north as Newfoundland, with gradually decreasing mean tem- 
perature from south to north; and its sharp limitation seaward by the 
Gulf Stream, argue for a northern origin.. And when we add to this 
the southwesterly drift which has been noted at many points along 
the coast between Nova Scotia and Cape Hatteras, it would require 
very strong evidence to prove that northern currents do not enter, in 
greater or less degree, into the composition of our coast water. 
Up to 1897 the Labrador Current, a polar stream which has borne 
am unsavory reputation among mariners ever since its discovery in 
1497 by John Cabot, was generally accepted as the source of this 
northern water, being so represented in practically all of the early 
atlases and textbooks; while Libbey (1891, 1895) expressly describes 
the cold water on the continental shelf south of Nantucket as one of 
| itsbranches. And this view is still widely held, for example, the U.S 
| Navy Department states that the Labrador Current flows from the 
Grand Banks past Nova Scotia, southward in a narrowing belt as 
| far even as the coast of Florida (Sumner, Osburn, and Cole, 1913, 
| 
| 
/ 
