298 On the Physical Geography of Norway. 



copied in the small chart which occupies one corner of the 

 map accompanying this work ; which at the same time shews 

 the general position of Norway relatively to other countries, 

 where it is observable that the northmost portion extends as 

 near the Pole as the centre of Greenland. The blue curves 

 which pass through places believed to have the same mean 

 temperature of the month of January, shew that we must 

 penetrate farther towards the Pole, in the neighbourhood of 

 the Norwegian coast, in order to obtain a given degree of 

 winter's cold than in any other part of the northern hemi- 

 sphere. In fact, we may conceive the Atlantic as moderating 

 the effect of winter by pouring in a flood of heat towards the 

 arctic seas, through the enormous strait between Greenland 

 and Norway, which connects the Atlantic Ocean with the pro- 

 per " Polar Basin," if such exist, and this flood of heat spends 

 itself chiefly or entirely on the Norwegian side of the opening 

 — the January isothermals falling with extreme rapidity into 

 lower latitudes on the inhospitable coast of Greenland. Now 

 this general expression of the phenomena evidenced by the 

 isothermal lines, has, as is well known, a physical cause pre- 

 cisely corresponding to it, and sufficiently explaining it. 

 This is the continual direction of a current of the Atlantic 

 waters, having the high temperature due to southern lati- 

 tudes precisely in the line in which the arctic cold is thus 

 powerfully repelled. The " Gulf Stream," taking its rise in 

 the Gulf of Florida, proceeds northwards and eastwards, un- 

 til it breaks on the shores of Europe and Northern Africa, a 

 portion of it striking the western coasts of the British Isles, 

 and being prolonged to the coast of Norway, imparting 

 warmth to water and to land, and effectually repelling the 

 invasion of floating ice, with which Finmarken would other- 

 wise be continually menaced.* It has been' calculated 

 that the heat thrown into the Atlantic Ocean by the Gulf 

 Stream in a winter's day would suffice to raise the tempera- 

 ture of the part of the atmosphere which rests upon France 

 and Great Britain from the freezing point to summer's heat. 



* II faut s'eloigner de 20 a 30 licues marines des derniers promontoire9 

 (North Cape) avant d'aperccvoir des iluts de glace ; encore sont-ils bien loin a 

 l'horizon. — Von Buch, Annales de Chimie et de Physique, vol. ii., 181G. 



