﻿Currents and Temperatures in Gulf of St. Lwwrence. 5 1 



of the Straits of Belle Isle, but in the low temperature of 

 the water, both at the surface and at the bottom, as far up 

 the northerly side of the Kiver St. Lawrence as at least 

 Murray Bay, seventy miles below Quebec, the general 

 effect of this low temperature on the vegetation of the 

 immediate coasts being seen in the limited distribution of 

 forest trees and the presence of high northern or semi- 

 Arctic plants. That icebergs were not found farther into 

 the Gulf was not an argument against the existence of a 

 branch current, as the milder atmosphere and warmer 

 surface waters of the land-locked gulf during summer, 

 would, naturally, tell rapidly on the masses of ice, how- 

 ever large, once they were carried well into and beyond 

 the Straits of Belle Isle. 



Mr. W. Bell Dawson, who has been commissioned 

 by the Dominion Government to make a survey of the 

 tides and currents of the Eiver and Gulf of St. Lawrence, 

 has, in his report for 1894, raised the questioa whether 

 there is an uniformly inward current at the Straits 

 of Belle Isle, and whether the currents there are not, 

 in reality, fundamentally tidal, though affected consider- 

 ably by the direction of the wind in the Straits, and 

 by barometric pressure in the Gulf as well as outside. 



Apart from the great scientific interest which attaches 

 to it, the proper settlement of this question is important 

 on account of its bearing on the navigation of the Straits 

 where several large steamships have in recent years been 

 lost. Enveloped in fog as these Straits so frequently are, 

 and their surface dotted at certain seasons with icebergs, 

 it is essential that their currents should be carefully 

 examined and thoroughly understood. Whilst, however, 

 Mr. Dawson's investigations into the direction and force 

 of the current have very great value attached to them, are 

 not the tests made too few in number and carried over 

 too limited an area, to, as yet, enable definite conclusions 

 to be drawn ? The nearest point in the Straits to the 



