Note 88 — SECTION II. PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF ICELAND.

The question is of vast practical importance. Upon it hinges the decision whether future Polar voyages, so necessary to the advanced study of electrical phenomena, to mention no other, shall take the route by Smith’s Sound or by Spitzbergen. For the battle of the Gulf Stream and Polar current between the Færoes and Iceland, see the Mittheilungen, xvi. (Nos. vi. and vii. of 1870), where the Gulf Stream is made to show 36°·5 F. as far as Novaya Zemlja, and to enter the Polar basin with diminution of temperature. The two distinct strata, the warm (40°-80° F.), and the heavier and more saline cold (about 35° F.) in the channel of the Færoes towards Scotland, have been described by Drs Carpenter and Wyville Thomson, the last time at the British Association, Sect. E, August 22, 1874.