THE BEDSHIEL KAIMS 301 



not quite high enough to permit of any important quantity 

 of it being chilled directly into snow. A branch of the 

 Gulf Stream finds its way up the English Channel, another 

 comes in by way of the Irish Sea, and a third drifts round 

 our east coasts. Now, the comparatively mild winters we 

 experience in Scotland are due to this bathing of our shores 

 by the warm water, and the warming of the air by the 

 rain connected with the Gulf Stream. If, after considering 

 these facts, the reader will now consult any good physical 

 map which shows, in a general way, the soundings near the 

 British Isles (almost any atlas of Physical Geography has 

 one such map), it will be seen that the seas around Britain 

 are all shallow ; and, indeed, deep water does not set in, 

 even in the Atlantic, nearer than a hundred miles to the 

 west of the Scottish mainland. 



This being the case, it follows that if the whole area 

 were to be raised above the sea, as it has been many 

 times, and the amount of elevation were to exceed six 

 hundred feet, some important climatal modifications would 

 follow. (1) The higher mountain tops would be elevated 

 to the region of perpetual snow. (2) There would be no 

 sidewash from the Gulf Stream in what is now the North 

 Sea. (3) The nearest part of the Gulf Stream itself would 

 be fully a hundred miles to the west of any part of the 

 mainland of Scotland. (4) A considerable area of dry land 

 would exist westward of Britain ; and, for the same reason, 

 the eastern side of England would be united by a land 

 connection with the Continent of Europe. The general 

 effect of these causes, acting separately or in combination, 

 would be to counteract some of the effects which the Sun's 

 heat produces in keeping our atmosphere at a temperature 

 somewhere between five and six hundred degrees above 

 that of the Absolute Zero. 



Probably the actual lowering of the temperature at first 

 might not be very great ; but climatal conditions in this 

 respect tend to go from bad to worse. If only a very little 

 more snow fell than was melted during the year, it would 

 of course tend not only to accumulate, but to spread. But 

 the extension of glacial conditions is often brought about in 

 consequence of one of the properties of ice and snow, which 



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