Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/479

Rh Ægean Seas. The western pool is less deep, though it reaches some 10,000 feet. And, just as the western end of the eastern pool communicates by a shallow passage, not a sixth of its greatest depth, with the western pool, so the western pool is separated from the Atlantic by a ridge which runs between Capes Trafalgar and Spartel, on which there is hardly 1,000 feet of water. All the water of the Mediterranean which lies deeper than about 150 fathoms, therefore, is shut off from that of the Atlantic, and there is no communication between the cold layer of the Atlantic (below 1 ,000 fathoms) and the Mediterranean. Under these circumstances, what is the temperature of the Mediterranean? Everywhere below 600 feet it is about 55° Fahr.; and consequently, at its greatest depths, it is some 20° warmer than the corresponding depths of the Atlantic.

It seems extremely difficult to account for this difference in any other way than by adopting the view so strongly and ably advocated by Dr. Carpenter, that, in the existing distribution of land and water, such a circulation of the water of the ocean does actually occur, as theoretically must occur, in the universal ocean, with which we started.

It is quite another question, however, whether this theoretic circulation, true cause as it may be, is competent to give rise to such movements of sea-water, in mass, as those currents, which have commonly been regarded as northerly extensions of the Gulf Stream. I shall not venture to touch upon this complicated problem; but I may take occasion to remark that the cause of a much simpler phenomenon—the stream of Atlantic water which sets through the Straits of Gibraltar, eastward, at the rate of two or three miles an hour or more, does not seem to be so clearly made out as is desirable.

The facts appear to be that the water of the Mediterranean is very slightly denser than that of the Atlantic (1.0278 to 1.0265), and that the deep water of the Mediterranean is slightly denser than that of the surface; while the deep water of the Atlantic is, if any thing, lighter than that of the surface. Moreover, while a rapid superficial current is setting in (always, save in exceptionally violent easterly winds) through the Straits of Gibraltar, from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, a deep under-current (together with. variable side-currents) is setting out through the Straits, from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic.

Dr. Carpenter adopts, without hesitation, the view that the cause of this indraught of Atlantic water is to be sought in the much more rapid evaporation which takes place from the surface of the Mediterranean than from that of the Atlantic; and thus, by lowering the level of the former, gives rise to an indraught from the latter.

But is there any sound foundation for the three assumptions involved here: Firstly, that the evaporation from the Mediterranean, as a whole, is much greater than that from the Atlantic under corresponding parallels; secondly, that the rainfall over the