Overspreading more than two‐thirds of the surface of the globe, throughout all longitudes and nearly from pole to pole, in basins whose cubical content is fourteen‐fold greater than the bulk of all the land of the world above sea‐level, is a medium whose capacity for heat far outruns the like property in any other abundant substance in Nature. The place of water in the economy of Nature is most remarkable. Everywhere natural conditions are seen to be molded and influenced by its wonderful properties. Although it is nowhere told how much water there is in the world, there is no doubt that the presence in the oceanic basins of 324,000,000 cubic miles of this substance must constitute the ocean a dominant factor in geophysics, exercising through its circulation a governing influence upon heat transference and upon climate. Throughout the ocean's vast expanse of one hundred and forty million square miles, exceeding, by eighty million square miles, the total area of the land surface of the Earth, it is never in equilibrium, and, consequently, forever in reaction under stresses both external and internal, resulting in movement to bring about a redistribution of