CAN WEATHER BE PREDICTED IN THE BRITISH ISLES? 169 
ships will not reach the Meteorological Office for months to 
come, but thus much may be said : — Two experienced captains, 
who have been traversing the part of the Atlantic in question 
for several years back, have independently informed me that 
they never recollect to have met with so high a temperature of 
the sea water in the neighbourhood of the Azores in Novem- 
ber as they observed last autumn. As to actual observations. 
Captain R. D. Lunham, a most trustworthy observer, reports 
60° on November 1, nearly on the very spot where Franklin 
had 61° just 100 years ago. 
This instance would, therefore, appear to confirm Sabine’s 
theory. He goes on to say : 44 There can be little hesitation in 
attributing the unusual extension of the stream in particular 
years to its greater initial velocity, occasioned by a more than 
ordinary difference in the levels of the Grulf of Mexico and of 
the Atlantic. It has been computed by Major Rennell,from the 
known velocity of the stream at various points of its course, that 
in the summer months, when its rapidity is greatest, the water 
requires about eleven weeks to run from the outlet of the Grulf 
of Mexico to the Azores, being about 3,000 geographical miles ; 
and he has further supposed, in the case of the water of which 
the temperature was examined by Dr. Franklin, that perhaps 
not less than three months were occupied in addition by its 
passage to the coasts of Europe, being altogether a course 
exceeding 4,000 geographical miles. On this supposition the 
water of the latter end of November 1776 may have quitted the 
Grulf of Mexico, with a temperature of 83°, in June, and that of 
January 1822 towards the end of July with nearly the same 
temperature. The summer months, particularly July and 
August, are those of the greatest initial velocity of the stream, 
because it is the period when the level of the Caribbean Sea and 
the Grulf of Mexico is most deranged. If the explanation of 
the apparently very unusual facts observed by Dr. Franklin in 
1776 and by the Iphigenicc in 1822 be correct, how highly 
curious is the connection thus traced between a more than 
ordinary strength of the winds within the tropics in summer, 
occasioning the derangement of the level of the Mexican and 
Caribbean Seas, and the high temperature of the sea between 
the British Channel and Madeira in the following winter.” 
It need not be remarked that it will be a matter of the 
highest interest and importance if we can, by observations 
taken on the Equator months before, draw conclusions as to the 
character of our coming seasons. If this should turn out to be 
true, we should have traced the history of our weather a ,few 
steps further back, but should not even then have discovered 
the absolute causes to which its changes are to be ascribed. We 
NEW SERIES, VOL. I. — NO. II. N 
