Page:Physical Geography of the Sea and its Meteorology.djvu/410

384 nearly midway between the same isotherms (70°) for March and September.

723. Plate IV.—A careful study of this plate, and the contemplation of the benign influence of the sea upon the climates which we enjoy, suggest many beautiful thoughts; for by such study we get a glimpse into the arrangements and the details of that exquisite machinery in the ocean which enables it to perform all its offices, and to answer with fidelity its marvellous adaptations. How, let us inquire, does the isothermal of 80°, for instance, get from its position in March to its position in September? Is it wafted along by currents, that is, by water which, after having been heated near the equator to 80°, then flows to the north with this temperature? Or is it carried there simply by the rays of the sun, as the snow-line is carried up the mountain in summer? We have reason to believe that it is carried from one parallel to another by each of these agents acting together, but mostly through the instrumentality of currents, for currents are the chief agents for distributing heat to the various parts of the ocean. The sun with its rays would, were it not for currents, raise the water in the torrid zone to blood heat; but before that can be done, they run off with it towards the poles, softening, and mitigating, and tempering climates by the way. The provision for this is as beautiful as it is benign; for, to answer a physical adaptation, it is provided by a law of nature that when the temperature of water is raised, it shall expand; as it expands, it must become lighter, and just in proportion as its specific gravity is altered, just in that proportion is equilibrium in the sea destroyed. Arrived at this condition, it is ordained that this hot water shall obey another law of nature, which requires it to run away and hasten to restore that equilibrium. Were these isothermal lines moved only by the rays of the sun, they would slide up and down the ocean like so many parallels of latitude—at least there would be no break in them, like that which we see in the isotherm of 80° for September. It appears from this line that there is a part of the ocean near the equator, and about midway the Atlantic, which, with its waters, never does attain the temperature of 80° in September. Moreover, this isotherm of 80° will pass in the North Atlantic, from its extreme southern to its extreme northern declination—nearly two thousand miles——in about three months. Thus it travels at the rate of about twenty-two miles a day. Surely, without the