THE GULF STREAM--ITS NATURE--CAUSE--ILLUSTRATION--EFFECT OF SMALL POWERS UNITED--ADVENTURES OF A PARTICLE OF WATER--EFFECT OF GULF STREAM ON CLIMATE--ITS COURSE--INFLUENCE ON NAVIGATION--SARGASSO SEA--SCIENTIFIC EFFORTS OF PRESENT DAY--WIND AND CURRENT CHARTS--EFFECTS ON COMMERCE-- CAUSE OF STORMS--INFLUENCE OF GULF STREAM ON MARINE ANIMALS. Of the varied motions of the sea, the most important, perhaps, as well as the most wonderful, is the Gulf Stream. This mighty current has been likened by Maury to a "river in the ocean. In the severest droughts it never fails, and in the mightiest floods it never overflows. Its banks and its bottom are of cold water, while its current is of warm. It takes its rise in the Gulf of Mexico (hence its name), and empties into the arctic seas. Its current is more rapid than the Mississippi or the Amazon, and its volume more than a thousand times greater." This great current is of the most beautiful indigo-blue colour as far out as the Carolina coasts; and its waters are so distinctly separated from those of the sea, that the line of demarcation may be traced by the eye. Its influences on the currents of the sea, and on the climates and the navigation of the world, are so great and important, that we think a somewhat particular account of it cannot fail to interest the reader. The waters of the Gulf Stream are salter than those of the sea; which fact accounts for its deeper blue colour, it being well known that salt has the effect of intensifying the blue of deep water. The cause of the Gulf Stream has long been a subject of conjecture and dispute among philosophers. Some have maintained that the Mississippi river caused it; but this theory is upset by the fact that the stream is salt--salter even than the sea--while the river is fresh. Besides, the volume of water emptied into the Gulf of Mexico by that river is not equal to the _three thousandth part_ of that which issues from it in the form of the Gulf Stream.