Page:A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions Vol 2.djvu/162

140 were able to make. Our observations proved that for the last few days we had been carried to the S. 60º E. by a current, at the rate of fifteen miles daily, similar to that we detected between Kerguelen Island and Van Diemen's Land, and which probably circulates round the globe in a belt of about five degrees on each side of the 50th parallel of south latitude. We still continued to meet with patches of seaweed, and the birds I have before enumerated. To-day a great number of grampuses were seen and a few whales.

As we were now getting near the latitude in which, from our former observations, we might expect to cross the circle of uniform temperature of the ocean, our experiments for the determination of this interesting point in physical geography were made at every opportunity: and, according to our expectation, we reached it on the 13th, in latitude 55º 18' S., longitude 149º 20' W. Unfortunately it was blowing too fresh for us to obtain the temperatures below six hundred fathoms: at that depth it was 39º.7; at 450 fathoms, 39º.7; at 300 fathoms, 39º.9; at 150 fathoms, 39º.6; and at the surface, 39. I have no doubt, that had we been able to measure the temperature to several thousand fathoms, we should have found it not to differ to the amount of one degree throughout the whole depth.

The next day proving more favourable for the purpose, thermometers were sent down to one