580 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
THE GULF STREAM. 
The papers read before the National Academy of Sciences yesterday were of 
much more general interest than most of those read on Tuesday. The morning 
session was devoted to reading and discussion of two contributions upon allied 
topics, ‘‘ The Basin of the Gulf Stream,” by Prof. J. E. Hilgard, and ‘‘ The Ori- 
gin of the Coral Reefs of the Yucatan and Florida Banks,” by Prof. Alexander 
Agassiz. Recent surveys under Superintendent C. P. Patterson, of the United 
States Coast and Geodetic Survey, show that fully one-third of the Gulf of Mexico 
is less than 100 fathoms deep, the depth increasing very rapidly at about the 100- 
fathom line to a flat central basin, about 2,000 fathoms in depth. ‘The two large 
plateaus, less than 100 fathoms beneath the surface of the water, are along the 
west coast of Florida, about 130 miles broad, and to the north of Yucatan, about 
1oo miles broad. These plateaus show the actual continental outline to be very 
different from the shore lines of the Gulf. Prof. Agassiz, in his paper, showed 
that these plateaus, whatever may have been their primal origin, are very largely 
composed of limestone, formed of the osseous carcasses of submarine life, and 
that whereas they had been in this way built up to the depth at which coral atolls 
or reefs begin to form—twenty-seven fathoms—as in the case of the Florida Keys 
and the coral islands north-west of Yucatan, coral atolls exactly similar to those 
in the Pacific described by Darwin were found. But Darwin had explained the 
Pacific atolls by a gradual, general subsidence of the bed of the ocean, and his 
theory was that all reef formations were accompanied by subsidence. Here in 
the Gulf the formation accompanies an elevation, and as similar plateaus are 
found in the coral regions of the Pacific, it is concluded that Darwin was all 
wrong, and that coral reef formations accompany elevations of ocean beds, instead 
of subsidence. During the discussion, the interesting fact was developed that the 
Gulf Stream, so called, does not come from the Gulf, as is represented in the 
physical geographies, but is an equatorial current which comes through the Car- 
ibbean Sea from the African coast, is turned north-east upon striking the coast of 
Yucatan, passes through the Straits of Yucatan and Florida and out into the At- 
lantic, without really entering the Gulf of Mexico at all. The currents in the 
Gulf are not connected with this great stream, and are very slow. The mouths 
of the Mississippi have already projected so far beyond the general coast line as 
to have nearly reached the precipitous declivities of the deep Gulf Basin, so there 
is no danger that the channel will ever be stopped again, or that the jetty system 
will have to be extended further into the Gulf than at present.—/V. Y. World. 
A California inventor has devised a process for pressing and drying potatoes 
so that they will keep for years without loss of flavor. 
