The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1873-02-03

expression WILL no dOuDt, af1Ord vast spirit 10
the Emperor Alexander, but Great Britain may
perhaps reply, like as did Palmerston on the
Schleswig- Holstein question, that there re-
mains good deal to be said on both sides.
The Shearwatcr Oceanic Researches.
The Royal Society Of England has recently
published a voluminous report on the
scientific researches carried on in the sur
veying ship Clearwater. This elaborate pa
per is from the well-known pen of Dr..
William B. Carpenter, and contains full ac-
count not only Of the Clearwater investiga-
tons in the sea, but also an important addi-
ton to the science of oceanic circulation.
While it may be seriously doubted whether
DR.. Carpenter has added anything to the
theoretical precision of this science the facts
which his labors have brought to light are
highly interesting.
HIS labors began in the successful attempt
to discover the current system of the Mediter-
ranean, whose surface, exposed to the hot,
drying winds Of Africa, is great evaporating
dish, and whose level, necessarily reduced, is
maintained only by strong indraught of
Atlantic water through the Gibraltar Channel.
Having proved the existence Of cold sab
marine current through the same channeD
sufficient to balance the indraught after its
loss by evaporation, he ingeniously pro-
posed to represent the Polar Ocean by the
Mediterranean, and the Equatorial Ocean by
the Atlantic outside Gibraltar, and thus to rise,
alphabetically, from the local circulation to
the grand general circulation of the entire
ocean. The conclusion reached by this bold
fight of reason was that constant inter-
change must be assumed between the cold,
heavy water of the Arctic seas and the light,
warm water of the tropics, and his present
exhaustive treatment of the observations he
has made and Of their physical import is the
best defence of his views he has produced
Differing with many of the first authorities
as to the agency of the Gulf Stream proper, he
adduces incontrovertible evidence of amelio-
ration in the climate of the British isles and
the regions northward by ''northeasterly
flow of oceanic water" AS the Gulf Stream
loses in Winter about twelve or fifteen degrees
of surface heat while passing from the Florida
must part still more rapidly with any thermal
excess it may retain when its superheated
stratum has been thinned out by superficial
extension. For this reason he rejects the
idea that the Winter warmth of Western
Europe, Great Britain and the scandinavian
peninsula is attributable in any way to the
Gulf Stream, but, on the contrary, it is as
sumed the mildness Of climate is due to
"northeasterly flow of warm water beginning
just where the Gulf Stream ceases.
It is a matter of no vital moment in physical
geography by what precise name its great
phenomena are described, but DR.. Carpenter
has apparently, in this respect at least, only
darkened his subject by raising a verbal con-
troversy. He claims for the North Atlantic
climates all the mtigated conditions which
would result by the old theory of Franklin,
Humboldt and Maury-viz., that its surface
current is borne enthusiastically from the
Grand Banks of Newfoundland towards
Ireland, the Hebrides and Norway. Why,
then, should the latter be set aside until
further researches show (Which they have not
yet done) break in the current off the Grand
Banks, or reveal the rise and movement of
some new current capable of producing the
same climatic effects whose existence Dr..
Carpenter himself affirms?
This celebrated physicist, welded as he is to
his hypothesis, and eager to reinforce it by the
opinions of all who think with him, very
strongly repudiates the crude idea recently
advanced in this country-that the temperature
of the ocean follows and is subject to that Of
the superintendent air, which also agitates its
pillows. The Scottish meteorologic observa-
tons show that the average annual thermo-
metric range CT the sea is several degrees higher
than that of the atmosphere, and that the
former is not governed by, but governs, the
latter. This is similarly and strikingly the case
on our Pacific coast, where the isotherms.
instead of running east and west, run north
and south lowing to the warm sea currently,
and where, as near Pugets Sound, in Wash.
ington Territory, one gets warmer by travel
ling in nOrthweatnrlv diract;o,, Tho n,roax