blue; they are so distinctly indicated that their line of junction can be marked by the eye." Such is Dr. Maury's description of this powerful current of warm water, which traverses the Atlantic Ocean, and influences in no slight manner the climate of Northern Europe, and especially our own shores. The Gulf Stream thus described by the American _savant_ issues from the Florida Channel, with a breadth of thirty-four miles, and a depth of two thousand two hundred feet, moving at the rate of four and a half miles per hour. The temperature of the water in the vicinity is about thirty degrees Cent. From the American coast the current takes a north-east direction towards Spitzbergen, its velocity and volume diminishing as it expands in breadth. Towards the forty-third degree of latitude it forms two branches, one of which strikes the coast of Ireland and of Norway, whither it frequently transports seeds of tropical origin: it also warms the frozen waters of the glacial sea. The other branch, inclining towards the south, not far from the Azores, visits the coast of Africa, whence it returns to the Antilles. Throughout this vast circuit may be seen all sorts of plants and driftwood, with waifs and strays of every description borne on the bosom of the ocean. "Midway the Atlantic, in the triangular space between the Azores, Canaries, and Cape de Verd Islands, is the great Sargasso Sea, covering an area equal in extent to the Mississippi Valley: it is so thickly matted over with the Gulf Weed (_Sargassum bacciferum_), that the speed of vessels passing through it is actually retarded, and to the companions of Columbus it seemed to mark the limits of navigation; they became alarmed. To the eye at a little distance it seemed sufficiently substantial to walk upon." These moving vegetable masses, always green, which tail off to a steady breeze, serving as an anemometer to the mariner, afford an asylum to multitudes of mollusks and crustaceans. The Gulf Stream plays a grand part in the Atlantic system. It carries the tepid water of the equinoctial regions into the high latitudes; beyond the fortieth parallel the temperature is sixteen degrees Cent. Urged by the south-west winds which predominate in that zone, its tepid waters mix with those of the Northern Sea, softening the rigour of the climate in these regions. To the south of the great bank of Newfoundland, the warm current, in vast volume rushing from the Florida Straits, meets the cold currents descending from the Arctic Circle through Baffin's Bay and the Sea of Greenland, running with equal velocity towards the south. A portion of these waters reascend towards the Pole along the western coast of Greenland. It is to this conflict of the polar and equatorial waters, that the formation of the banks of Newfoundland is ascribed. Each of these great currents having unceasingly deposited the débris carried in its bosom, the bank has been thus formed bit by bit in the concourse of ages.