Nothing is known as to the rate of this bottom drift from the polar districts toward the equator, but, from some computation which he has made, the writer is of the opinion that several centuries is doubtless required for the journey from the Arctic Circle to the tropics. The speed of the movement probably varies; it may at times require some thousand years for its accomplishment. The effect of the bottom drift is to withdraw from seas in high latitudes the very cold water which there forms, and to convey it beneath the seas of middle latitudes to a realm where it is well placed for the reheating process. If all the cold water of circumpolar regions had to journey over the surface to the equator, the perturbing effect of its flow on the climates of various lands would be far greater than it is at present. Where such cold currents exist the effect is to chill the air without adding much to the rainfall; while the currents setting northward not only warm the regions near which they flow, but by so doing send from the water surfaces large quantities of moisture which fall as snow or rain. Thus the Gulf Stream, directly and indirectly, probably contributes more than half the rainfall about the Atlantic basin. The lack of this influence on the northern part of North America and Asia causes those lands to be sterilized by cold, although destitute of permanent ice and snow upon their surfaces. We readily perceive that the effect of the oceanic circulation upon the temperatures of different regions is not only great but widely contrasted. By taking from the equatorial belt a large part of the heat which falls within that realm, it lowers the temperature to the point which makes the district fit for the occupancy of man, perhaps, indeed, tenable to all the higher forms of life. This same heat removed to high latitudes tempers the winter's cold, and thus makes a vast realm inhabitable which otherwise would be locked in almost enduring frosts. Furthermore, this distribution of temperatures tends to reduce the total wind energy by diminishing the trades and counter trades which are due to the variations of heat which are encountered in passing polarward from the equator. Still further, but for this circulation of water in the sea, the oceans about the poles would be frozen to their very bottom, and this vast sheet of ice might be extended southward to within the parallels of fifty degrees north and south latitude, although the waters under the equator might at the same time be unendurably hot and unfit for the occupancy of living beings.