Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 2 (1878).djvu/342

318 be naturalists. Without entering into a discussion on ocean circulation, which would occupy too much space, we must, in the first instance, direct our thoughts to the equatorial regions of the Atlantic, where the prevailing and constant winds propel the warm water of the tropics against the long breakwater of the two Americas. Finding no loophole of escape in that direction, this mass of water naturally seeks an outlet towards the point of least resistance, which is across the North Atlantic, through the gap between Iceland and the north of Scotland, along the western coast of Norway, washing the shores of Spitsbergen, and finally entering the vast refrigerator of the Polar Basin. The influx of this enormous body of heated water necessitates a corresponding outflow of colder water, and we find that such exists, the main current passing south along the east coast of Greenland, bearing on its surface the decaying ice of the Polar floes. Sweeping around Cape Farewell, part of this current is deflected along the western shore of South Greenland, then joining with the southerly setting current of Baffin Bay and Smith Sound, the great mass of cold water, laden with icebergs, moves towards the shores of Newfoundland and Labrador and the coasts of New England.

Though somewhat of a digression, it is essential that the effects of the warm north-setting and the cold south-setting currents should be duly considered, otherwise no correct appreciation can be obtained of the Natural History of the Polar Regions ; and when we reflect that the south-western shore of Spitsbergen, in the seventy-seventh parallel, is during the summer almost free from ice, whilst the east coast of Greenland, in the latitude of Bergen, is blockaded with drift-ice, and its glaciers protrude into the sea, it appears hardly necessary to invoke a change in the earth's axis to account for a glacial epoch having existed in Great Britain.

On the 28th June, a month after leaving Portsmouth, we sighted the coast of Greenland, somewhere about the vicinity of Cape Desolation, and for the next few days continued our course along its shores, keeping just outside of the drift-ice from the east coast. Whenever we neared the shore, Kittiwakes, Arctic Terns, and Iceland Gulls were numerous, and Seals were common on the drift-ice. In hit. 62° N. we observed a single Walrus. A Fulmar captured at this time had its stomach filled with the horny mandibles of a small cephalapod.

On one occasion we dredged, in thirty fathoms, on a bank lying