eds the Gulf Stream that its main bulk would be deflected
southward instead of northward, by the angle of Cape St. Roque. Thus the
Gulf Stream would be nipped in the bud, and, according to Dr. Croll's
estimates, the results would be disastrous for the northern hemisphere.
The anti-trades, which now are warmed by the Gulf Stream, would then
blow as cold winds across the shores of western Europe, and in all
probability a glacial epoch would supervene throughout the northern
hemisphere.

The same consequences, so far as Europe is concerned at least, would
apparently ensue were the Isthmus of Panama to settle into the sea,
allowing the Caribbean current to pass into the Pacific. But the
geologist tells us that this isthmus rose at a comparatively recent
geological period, though it is hinted that there had been some time
previously a temporary land connection between the two continents. Are
we to infer, then, that the two Americas in their unions and disunions
have juggled with the climate of the other hemisphere? Apparently so, if
the estimates made of the influence of the Gulf Stream be tenable. It is
a far cry from Panama to Russia. Yet it seems within the possibilities
that the meteorologist may learn from the geologist of Central America
something that will enable him to explain to the paleontologist of
Europe how it chanced that at one time the mammoth and rhinoceros roamed
across northern Siberia, while at another time the reindeer and musk-ox
browsed along the shores of the Mediterranean.

Possibilities, I said, not probabilities. Yet even the faint glimmer of
so alluring a possibility brings home to one with vividness the truth
of Humboldt's perspicuous observation that meteorology can be properly
comprehended only when studied in connection with the companion
sciences. There are no isolated phenomena in nature.

CYCLONES AND ANTI-CYCLONES

Yet, after all, it is not to be denied that the chief concern of the
meteorologist must be with that other medium, the "ocean of air, on
the shoals of which we live." For whatever may be accomplished by water
currents in the way of conveying heat, it is the wind currents that
effect the final distribution of that heat. As Dr. Croll has urged, the
waters of the Gulf Stream do not warm the shores of Europe by direct
contact, but by warming the anti-trade-winds, which subsequently blow
across the continent. And everywhere the heat accumulated by water
becomes effectual in mod