that sea. As it has been known to arrive there in the
months of November and January, it may tend greatly to moderate the cold
of winter in countries on the west of Europe. . There is a large tract
in the centre of the North Atlantic, between the parallels of 33 degrees
and 45 degrees N. lat., which Rennell calls the "recipient of the gulf
water." A great part of it is covered by the weed called sargasso
(_Sargassum bacciferum_), which the current floats in abundance from the
Gulf of Mexico. This mass of water is nearly stagnant, is warmer by 7
degrees or 10 degrees than the waters of the Atlantic, and may be
compared to the fresh water of a river overflowing the heavier salt
water of the sea. Rennell estimates the area of the "recipient,"
together with that covered by the main current, as being 2000 miles in
length from E. to W., and 350 in breadth from N. to S., which, he
remarks, is a larger area than that of the Mediterranean. The heat of
this great body of water is kept up by the incessant and quick arrivals
of fresh supplies of warm water from the south; and there can be no
doubt that the general climate of parts of Europe and America is
materially affected by this cause.

It is considered probable by Scoresby that the influence of the Gulf
stream extends even to the sea near Spitzbergen, where its waters may
pass under those of melted ice; for it has been found that in the
neighborhood of Spitzbergen, the water is warmer by 6 degrees or 7
degrees at the depth of one hundred and two hundred fathoms than at the
surface. This might arise from the known law that fresh water passes the
point of greatest density when cooled down below 40 degrees, and between
that and the freezing point expands again. The water of melted ice might
be lighter, both as being fresh (having lost its salt in the decomposing
process of freezing), and because its temperature is nearer the freezing
point than the inferior water of the Gulf stream.

The great glaciers generated in the valleys of Spitzbergen, in the 79
degrees of north latitude, are almost all cut off at the beach, being
melted by the feeble remnant of heat still retained by the Gulf stream.
In Baffin's Bay, on the contrary, on the west coast of Old Greenland,
where the temperature of the sea is not mitigated by the same cause, and
where there is no warmer under-current, the glaciers stretch out from
the shore, and furnish repeated crops of mountainous masses of ice which
float