Page:Physical Geography of the Sea and its Meteorology.djvu/215

Rh sea. Writers whose opinions are entitled to great respect differ with me as to the conclusiveness of this demonstration. Among those writers are Admiral Smyth, of the British Navy, and Sir Charles Lyell, who also differ with each other. In 1820, Dr. Marcet being then engaged in studying the chemical composition of sea water, the admiral, with his usual alacrity for doing "a kind turn," undertook to collect for the doctor specimens of Mediterranean water from various depths, especially in and about the Straits of Gibraltar. Among these was the one (§ 385) taken fifty miles within the Straits from the depth of six hundred and seventy fathoms (four thousand and twenty feet), which, being four times Salter than common sea water, left, as we have just seen, no doubt in the mind of Dr. Wollaston as to the existence of this under current of brine. But the indefatigable admiral, in the course of his celebrated survey of the Mediterranean, discovered that, while inside of the Straits the depth was upwards of nine hundred fathoms, yet in the Straits themselves the depth across the shoalest section is not more than one hundred and sixty fathoms. "Such being the case, we can now prove," exclaims Sir Charles Lyell, "that the vast amount of salt brought into the Mediterranean does not pass out again by the Straits for it appears by Captain Smyth's soundings, which Dr. Wollaston had not seen, that between the Capes of Trafalgar and Spartel, which are twenty-two miles apart, and where the Straits are shallowest, the deepest part, which is on the side of Cape Spartel, is only two hundred and twenty fathoms. It is therefore evident, that if water sinks in certain parts of the Mediterranean, in consequence of the increase of its specific gravity, to greater depths than two hundred and twenty fathoms, it can never flow out again into the Atlantic, since it must be stopped by the submarine barrier which crosses the shallowest part of the Straits of Gibraltar. "

387. Vertical circulation in the sea a physical necessity.—According to this reasoning, all the cavities, the hollows, and the valleys at the bottom of the sea, especially in the trade-wind region, where evaporation is so constant and great, ought to be salting up or filling up with brine. Is it probable that such a process is actually going on? No. According to this reasoning,