Dr. Carpenter entertains a very strong opinion that the dispersion of the Gulf Stream may be affirmed to be complete in about lat. 45° N. and long. 35° W. Dr. Carpenter admits the accuracy of the projection of the isotherms on the maps of Berghaus, Dove, Petermann, and Keith Johnston, and he admits likewise the conclusion that the abnormal mildness of the climate on the northwestern coast of Europe is due to a movement of equatorial water in a northeasterly direction. “What I question is the correctness of the doctrine that the northeast flow is an extension or prolongation of the Gulf Stream, still driven on by the _vis à tergo_ of the trade-winds--a doctrine which (greatly to my surprise) has been adopted and defended by my colleague, Professor Wyville Thomson. But while these authorities attribute the whole or nearly the whole of this flow to the true Gulf Stream, _I_ regard a large part, if not the whole, of that which takes place along our own western coast, and passes north and northeast between Iceland and Norway toward Spitzbergen, as quite independent of that agency; so that it would continue if the North and South American Continents were so completely disunited that the equatorial currents would be driven straight onward by the trade-winds into the Pacific Ocean, instead of being embayed in the Gulf of Mexico and driven out in a northeast direction through the ‘narrows’ off Cape Florida.” Dr. Carpenter does not mean by this to indorse Mr. Findlay’s opinion that the movement beyond the 54th parallel of latitude is due solely to the drift of the anti-trades; he says, “On the view I advocate, the northeasterly flow is regarded as due to the _vis à fronte_ originating in the action of cold upon the water of the polar area, whereby its level is always tending to depression.” The amelioration of the climate of northwestern Europe is thus caused by a “modified case” of the general oceanic circulation, and neither by the Gulf Stream nor by the anti-trade drift. Although there are, up to the present time, very few trustworthy observations of deep-sea temperatures, the surface temperature of the North Atlantic has been investigated with considerable care. The general character of the isothermal lines, with their singular loop-like northern deflections, has long been familiar through the temperature charts of the geographers already quoted, and of late years a prodigious amount of data have been accumulated. In 1870, Dr. Petermann, of Gotha, published an extremely valuable series of temperature charts, embodying the results of the reduction of upward of 100,000 observations. Dr. Petermann has devoted the special attention of a great part of his life to the distribution of heat on the surface of the ocean, and the accuracy and conscientiousness of his work in every detail are beyond the shadow of a doubt.