Distribution of Land and Water. 319 
2s far as the entire surface of the earth is considered; for it is 
dor water parts with its heat by radiation into space, that 
warmth can never be restored to any part of the earth’s surface; 
which it has acquired during the day shall have penetrated so 
eeply as to be incapable of being radiated backwards into space 
during the night, with the same facility as on the surface of a 
sandy plain or from the summits of a mass of vegetation. Its 
temperature should thus continue to accumulate up to a certain 
limit imposed by the conditions of evaporation, and it might 
ultimately attain'a mean temperature superior to any which is 
iow met at the surface of intertropical seas. 
3. T ese views are strikingly illustrated by the — 
‘eompanying the origin of the Gulf Stream. The mas 
Water which rushes into the Gulf of Mexico, along the southern 
shores of the Carribbean Sea, has already acquired a certain 
elevated temperature from the action of sunshine in the south- 
‘™ torrid zone in its passage from Cape St. Roque. In movin 
‘ound the Caribbean Sea and the Mexican Gulf, these waters 
Continue under the influence of a tropical sun, and are con- 
hey Increasing in temperature. The islands and coasts which. 
to bathe, have no part in directly promoting this 
bis 25°°5. In other places it gradually augments from 26° 
= lng from the land, te: to 27 Ont These results are uncon- 
Bioeth the influence of latitude, and they are still less ex- 
hag: heavier waters towards the edges of the 9 peter 3 
; ‘ ri 
this case th 
7. * 
Annuaire de la Société Météorologique de Ja France, tom i, p. 160. 
Reduced it’s scal numbers, 
.ed to degrees of Fahrenheit’s scale, these numbers, arranged in the same 
88 In the text, are 76°-1, 779-0, 779-9, 7898, 819-3. 
i- 
