598 



Dr. W. B. Carpenter on the 



[June 13, 



stream proper have found much support in the United States, from men 

 eminently qualified, by their knowledge of its Hydrographical phenomena, 

 to estimate its real influence on the temperature of the North-east exten- 

 sion of the Atlantic. Thus Mr. G. W. Blunt, " the head of the well-known 

 " house that has for nearly a century prepared and published the charts 

 " that have guided the American Mariner in every quarter of the globe," 

 says in a letter to the President of the American Geographical and Statis- 

 tical Society, — "Beyond the Western Islands, I believe the Gulf-stream 

 " has no existence ; and its alleged effects on the climate of the British 

 " Islands are matters of assertion only. The Gulf-stream, as a current, I 

 " believe, entirely ceases and loses all its equatorial heat to the eastward of 

 " W. Long. 40° ; the set to the east is that of the general set of the North 

 " Atlantic, and the temperature of the water is that of the general tempe- 

 rature in those regions"*. And Dr. Hayes, the Arctic explorer, who 

 formerly participated in the prevalent belief as to the extended agency of 

 the Gulf-stream, has recently been so completely convinced by Mr. Blunt's 

 representations, that he lias written an elaborate article on " The Real 

 Gulf-stream " f, for the purpose of correcting the prevalent idea that 

 the Gulf-stream influences the temperature of the North Atlantic. " It 

 "is an error," he says, "into which many persons (including the writer 

 "of this article) have been led through lack of familiarity with facts, 

 " to suppose that the Gulf-stream sends off a branch from its northern 

 " limit to the Arctic Ocean, or even, as we shall presently have occasion 



" to show, that it touches any part of the coasts of Europe." 



" Being a resultant current, and having no force applied to it to keep it in 

 "motion, its strength diminishes; the air of a higher latitude brings its 

 " temperature down to that of the North Atlantic generally ; the water 

 " loses all its Gulf-stream character, as to course, warmth, and flow ; and 

 "it dies away into the sluggish Atlantic drift which sets from a westerly to 

 "an easterly direction." — Dr. Hayes adopts the view of Mr. Findlay, that 

 the amelioration of the climate of the British Isles and of regions further 

 north is mainly due, as Dr. Stork had previously maintained (Nautical 

 Magazine, 1857), to the prevalence of South-westerly winds; and he 

 affirms, with Dr. Stork, that the temperature of the sea rather follows 

 than controls that of the superincumbent air, 



98. On the other hand, the doctrine of Dr. Petermann finds an enthu- 

 siastic advocate in Capt. Silas BentJ; who not only maintains that the 

 thermal influence of the Gulf-stream is traceable to Spitzbergen and Nova 

 Zembla, but attributes to its agency the whole difference between the 



* Journal of the American Geographical and Statistical Society, vol. ii. (1870) 

 part 2, pp. cvi et seq. 



t Harper's Atlantic Monthly, Jan. 1872. 



\ Addresses on "The Thermometric Gateways to the Pole," delivered before the 

 Historical Society of St. Louis (U. S.), 1869, and before the St. Louis Mercantile Library 

 Association, Jan. 6, 1872. 



