Northern Hemisphere

“ The counter-trade of the northern hemisphere ranges at different heights in different latitudes, in the same latitude at different seasons, and also upon different days of the same season; and, like the line of perpetual snow, has its greatest elevation in the tropics, descending gradually to the surface of the ocean at the poles. At the northern limit of the N. E. trades, it does not, ordinarily, approach the earth sufficiently near for decided reciprocal action. ”

“ The form and arrangement of the continents is shown to be such as to favour the transfer of warm oceanic currents to the north far in excess of those which move towards the south, and whenever these currents had free passage through the northern land-masses to the polar area, a mild climate must have prevailed over the whole northern hemisphere. It is only in very recent times that the great northern continents have become so completely consolidated as they now are, thus shutting out the warm water from their interiors, and rendering possible a wide-spread and intense glacial epoch. ”

“ The northern hemisphere offers the largest advantages for the habitation of man, and significantly enough, contains a population five times that of the southern hemisphere. The latter, on the other hand, with its vast, unbroken water areas, has been the great oceanic highway for circum-mundane exploration and trade. ”

“ The rest of the races of mankind were differentiated within the northern hemisphere. Being affected from the first by the varying environment of the glacial era, these northern emigrants were influenced by different conditions from those to which their ancestors had become accustomed in the Indo-Malaysian abode. Furthermore, upon the final retreat of the ice the people of the north became marked off from the inhabitants of the south by climate bounds. ”

“ Now it is consequently manifest that this part of the earth is as fertile and habitable as the northern hemisphere, for the south has of necessity the same distribution of zones as the north; that is to say, half of the torrid zone from the equinoctial line to the tropic of Capricorn, then the temperate zone from that to the Antarctic circle, and then that which lies between the Antarctic circle and the Antarctic pole ”

“ In the wide territory of the northern hemisphere civilization has experienced an uninterrupted development, first in the Old World, because this offered in its large area north of the equator the fundamental conditions for rapid evolution ”

“ In the Northern Hemisphere, when the Polar and Equatorial currents of air are alternating with each other, the regular shifting of the wind round the compass will be through S., S.W., W., N.W., N., N.E., E., S.E., S.—and the changes will take place oftener between south and west, and between north and east, than between west and north, and between east and south. ”

“ The attraction of a milder climate has caused in the northern hemisphere a constantly recurring migration from north to south. In primitive North America, along the whole broad Atlantic slope, the predominant direction of Indian migrations was from north to south, accompanied by a drift from west to east.207 On the Pacific side of the continent also the trend was southward. ”

“ This extension southwards of glacial phenomena in regions where there are no snow-covered mountains like the Alps to explain the exception, nor any hills of more than moderate elevation, constitutes a feature of the western as compared to the eastern side of the Atlantic, and must be taken into account when we speculate on the causes of the refrigeration of the northern hemisphere during the Pleistocene period. ”

“ In other words, just as a bucket full of water set to revolving on a perpendicular axis would show a depression in the centre, and the fluid be thrown from all sides of its rim, the Southern Hemisphere throws its water and its atmosphere into the Northern Hemisphere, all along the equator.
It is, therefore, a mathematical and mechanical certainty that there is an invasion of the northeast trade-wind belt from the southeast trades, and observation powerfully bears out the deduction of the mathematician. ”

“ During the glacial age vast fields of ice and snow covered the Northern hemisphere of both continents for a great distance from the poles to an unknown depth, driving all existing forms of animal life towards the sub-tropical zone and substituting arctic forms. ”

“ The lands, for example, to the north of Greenland cause the present climate of North America to be colder than that of Europe in the same latitudes; but the excess of cold is not so great as it would have been if the western hemisphere had been entirely isolated, or separated from the eastern like a distinct planet. For not only does the refrigeration produced by Greenland chill to a certain extent the atmosphere of northern and western Europe, but the mild climate of Europe reacts also upon North America, and moderates the chilling influence of the adjoining polar lands. ”

“ The opposite hemisphere contains more land than water; and when it is in its turn placed above the horizon, the Atlantic will be seen lying almost wholly on the western side of the meridian, and forming, with the Arctic ocean, a species of channel, narrowing from the latitude of the Cape of Good Hope towards the northern pole, and communicating with the great ocean which lies principally in the opposite hemisphere by Behring's straits. ”

“ Now, if we apply this rule, by turning the north pole of a globe toward us, we readily see at a glance that Greenland, which is known to us, may bear to an unknown Arctic Continent the same relation that South America does to North America, or Africa to Europe. Hence it is perfectly logical to infer, by the great analogy of nature, that an Arctic Continent exists beneath the north pole, extending three and a half to four degrees south from the northern axis of the world. ”

“ Sir Archibald Geikie says that the western margin of the ice-fields from the south-west of Ireland to the North Cape of Norway must have presented a vast wall of ice 1200 to 1500 miles long and hundreds of feet high—like that great barrier which the Antarctic explorers tell us frown on the waters that lap the boundaries of the south polar land. Northern Europe must have been like North Greenland of to-day. ”

“ The grand and rugged landscapes of Northern Europe, the midnight sun, the flashing rays of the aurora borealis, the ocean continually lashing itself into fury against the great cliffs and icebergs of the arctic circle, could not but impress the people as vividly as the almost miraculous vegetation, the perpetual light, and the blue seas and skies of their brief summer season. ”

“ Indeed, such is the inequality in the distribution of land over the surface of the globe that the world may be divided into hemispheres consisting, the one with almost all the land in it, except Australia and a slip of America lying south of a line drawn from the desert of Atacama to Uruguay; England is the centre of this, the dry hemisphere. The other, or aqueous hemisphere, contains all the great waters except the Atlantic Ocean; New Zealand is the nearest land to its centre. ”

“ It would appear, that the finest portion, at least apparently so, of the north temperate zone, between the parallels of 30° and 48° latitude, when nearly of the level of the ocean, is not so favourable for human existence as the more northern part between 50° and 60°, or even the torrid zone. ”