Shaler.] 336 [January 20, 



Europeans, may be due to changes which took place sometime be- 

 fore that settlement. Fortunately the process of change has already 

 reached a point where all future refrigeration of the Arctic region 

 by its action seems improbable. 



A considerable part of the influence which would be brought to 

 bear by the lowering of the Alaskan barrier, 1 would consist in the es- 

 cape of the cold waters from the pole. It is not only the entrance 

 of tropically heated water but also the deportation of the cold water 

 by the counter current and the icebergs floated therewith that would 

 affect the transformation of Arctic regions. The same machinery 

 which carries heat to the polar regions would take away the ice fields 

 and prevent the accumulation of such a reservoir of cold as is now 

 furnished by the ice cap of that region. 



In this connection it may be suggested as an interesting question, 

 whether the deep water in the North Pacific is as cold as that in the 

 North Atlantic, it would seem that the absence of a broad and direct 

 communication between the North Pacific and the Arctic Oceans 

 should make it sufficient for the water of the deep sea in that region 

 to retain the excessively low temperature which has been found in 

 the abysms of the North Atlantic. If the polar water finds its way 

 in sufficient quantities into the depths of the Northern Pacific to pro- 

 duce the excessively low temperature found in the North Atlantic 

 basin, it would seem that it must come from the southern and not 

 from the northern polar region. This question should give an in- 

 creased interest to the future exploration of that basin. 



The conclusions to which we are apparently led by the considera- 

 tion of the foregoing questions are as follows : 



1st. That while the continents have remained in their present 

 general relations with their broad bases turned toward the northern 



i That worthless and hapless bit of land, Alaska, has already robbed one-half this 

 continent of a decent climate. No other region of its area on the surface of the 

 earth has done so much to reduce the usefulness of a great continent. With the 

 Japan current flowing freely into the Arctic Ocean, we would probably have had a 

 climate in the northern hemisphere where the isochiemals and isotherals and iso- 

 thermals of Ireland would have been at least as high as in Greenland. It is even 

 likely that the effect would have been greater than this, for the existence of 

 warmth in the Arctic Seas would have lifted the temperature of Northern Eu- 

 rope as well as that of Northern America. If ever man in his advance gets that 

 strong hold on mechanical forces which will enable him to deal with the surface 

 of the earth as he now deals with the smaller matters of his environment,, one 

 of his first efforts will be to rid the earth of that unhappy bar to the movement 

 ol tropical waters toward the pole. 



