Gulf Stream. 49 T 



the water was found to average about four degrees below 

 tbat of tbe air. 



Where in ocean current maps the arrows point 

 southwards, there are cold streams of water coming 

 from the icy seas of the north. One of these passes 

 along the east coast of America, and coming from the 

 North Sea, many an iceberg detached from the great 

 glaciers of Greenland is floated from Baffin's Bay across 

 the banks of Newfoundland into the Western Atlantic, 

 as far south even as the parallel of New York. The 

 western half of the North Atlantic is thus kept cool, and 

 the water is often colder than the air. 



The Gulf Stream occupies a very great width in 

 the Atlantic, and approaches tolerably near to our 

 own western coast, and the effect of this body of warm 

 water flowing northward is to divert the isothermal 

 lines (lines of equal temperature) far to the north, over 

 a* large part of the Atlantic area, and also of that of the 

 western half of Europe. Thus a certain line runs 

 across North America, about latitude 50, representing 

 an average temperature for the whole year of 32. 

 Across that continent it passes tolerably straight, but 

 no sooner does it get well into the Atlantic than the 

 Gulf Stream, flowing northwards, warms the air, and 

 the result is, that the line bends away to the far north 

 above Norway ; thus in the west of Europe producing 

 an average warmer climate, for the whole year, than 

 exists in corresponding latitudes in North America, the 

 middle of Europe, and the interior of Asia. Our British 

 climate, and all the west of Europe, becomes, as it were, 

 abnormally warm, owing to the influence of the Gulf 

 Stream, and we at once recognise this fact from the cir- 

 cumstance that trees of goodly size grow much further 

 north on the west coasts of Europe than on the east 



