Southern Medical and Surgical Journal - Georgia Regents University

1859.] Climate to the Consumptive, &c. 727of longitude, are to be exposed, a specific designation of the dimensions,and the degree of access of such currents, is absolutelynecessary, since their effects upon land climates are in directrelation with them. . Hence the necessity for an endeavor onour part to give this current other than a general significationand location.All perhaps agree that the reductionof the summer temperaturealong the Pacific, from thirty to fifty degrees of latitude,which so greatly distinguishes it from the western coast of Europe,is due to a great extent to the operation of this mass ofwater. But their writings tend also to the presumption thatthe effect upon at least one-half of this extent, namely fromforty to fifty degrees, is more or less indirect, and is not effectedby direct contact of the waters with the shore.Mr. Blodget says, (page 195, Climatology of the U. States,)" apparently an immense cold current approaches the coast hereat thirty-five to forty-five degrees of latitude, which in summerexercises a wide and decisive influence on all the includedcoasts, its maximum and central point being nearly at SanFrancisco." Again he remarks; "but the refrigerating currentappears to originate westward of Alaska, and to^>ass nearlydue southeast from that point toward the continent in the latitudeof Monterey ; not entering the indentations of the Russian andBritish American coasts, probably in any degree," (See page278.) But in another place, (page 261) this author, while treatingof the distribution of heat for the spring,uses the followingsignificant language : "for the mean of the three months, thesea-temperatures observed off this coast,* (Pacific,) are strikinglyuniform, and they show but little if any advance on those ofwinter.For some hundreds of miles on the fortieth parallel, thereis little difference in the sea-temperatures, for the entire year ; andin spring, such observations as we possess, show them to bequite the same between the thirty-fifth and fortieth parallels,thirty degrees of longitude westward from San Francisco."again, he says ;forYet" a portion of the coast of Oregon has temperaturesnoticeably higher, for the briefwhich may perhaps prove the position of theperiod of the record there,cold line to he a littledistance off that coast at sea," (See page 275.) Moreover, he as-* The parenthetic word is our own.