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PROFESSOR FORCHHAMMER ON THE COMPOSITION 
on the north side of Spitzbergen contained 33-623 per 1000. The last-mentioned sample 
seems to be real polar water, while all the water that flows between Norway, Spitzbergen, 
Iceland, and the east coast of Greenland partakes of the nature of the Gulf-stream. 
Besides the reasons just mentioned for considering the East Greenland current to be 
a returning branch of the Gulf-stream, reasons which are deduced from the quantity of 
salt which the water contains, there are other reasons which lead to the same result. It 
is well known that the Gulf-stream brings tropical fruits from America to the coast of 
Norway, and it has once brought a river-vessel loaded with mahogany to the coast of the 
Faroe Islands. It is likewise known that similar fruits to those which are found on the 
Norwegian shores are carried by the sea to the coast of Iceland, and principally to its 
north and east coasts, where they only could get if the Gulf-stream turns between Spitz- 
bergen and Iceland, and thus runs between Iceland and Greenland towards the south- 
west. It would be difficult to explain how a polar current could bring tropical fruit to 
the north coast of Iceland. 
On the west coast of Greenland the south-easterly wind brings in winter a mild tem- 
perature, and this fact is so generally known in the Danish colonies of Greenland, that 
many of the colonists are convinced that there are volcanos in the interior of that 
snow-clad land. The temperature which this current, that in winter and spring is full 
of drifting ice (not icebergs), communicates, can of course not be above freezing-point, 
hut that temperature is mild, when the general temperature in winter is 8°, 10°, or 12° R. 
below the freezing-point. All these facts together leave hardly any doubt in my mind 
that it is the Gulf-stream which runs along the east coast of Greenland, and at last in 
Davis’s Straits mixes its waters with the polar current from Baffin’s Bay. In its course 
towards the south it meets the main part of the Gulf-stream at Newfoundland, where it 
partly mixes with it to begin its circulation anew, partly dives under it, and runs as a 
ground stream as far as the Equator. In a similar way the southern branch of the Gulf- 
stream, which goes parallel to the western shores of South Europe and North Africa, 
joins the equatorial current at its beginning in the Bay of Benin, and begins also its 
circulation anew. 
Chemical Decomposition in Sea-water. 
If we consider the almost uniform composition of sea-water in the different parts of 
the ocean, such as they are represented by comparing the salts with the quantity of 
chlorine as unity, and thus avoiding the influence of the different quantities of water 
in which they are dissolved, we might be inclined to suppose the salts of sea-water to 
be in chemical combination with each other, and to form a compound salt with definite 
proportions. This is however not the case, and sea-water is not more a chemical com- 
pound than the atmospheric air, and the steadiness of the quantity of the different sub- 
stances depends partly upon the enormous mass of the water of the ocean, compared 
to which all changes disappear, partly upon the constant motion which current and 
wind occasion. In the bays and those parts of the sea which only have narrow sounds 
that connect them with the main ocean, where therefore the general motion of the sea 
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