discoverer and explorer. The equatorial current of the Pacific is wider and grander even than that of the Atlantic. It is the parent stream out of which so many other bodies of water ob. tain their volume. It moves, as do all such currents of the ocean, on the line of a great circle, and this circle intersects the Equator at an acute angle of only a few degrees. It sweeps to the westward in uninterrupted grandeur,' as one expresses it, around three-eighths of the circumference of the globe, until diverted by the continent of Asia, and split io innumerable streams by the Polynesian Islands. Reaching the Ladrones, it imparts a much warmer climate than has been given to the Sandwich or Marquesas. The Philippines are made oppressively hot, even in winter, and one familiar with it has said: The fervor increases as we reach Malaoca, is all aglow in India, and becomes stifling in its intensity as these equatotorial waters, after travelling fifteen thousand miles, and being fully three hundred days under a vertical sun, are thrown against the eastern shores of Africa.' This equatorial current is as broad as the Torrid Zone, and out of it comes the Kuro Siwo.

6

The latter possesses a temperature more striking in its contrasts with the surrounding waters than does the Gulf Stream of the Atlantic.

Striking off at Formosa, from the great equatorial, it moves with majestic powers, heedless of the fiercest gale, and to the eye of the thoughtful observer is bent upon the discharge of some momentous mission. Reaching the fortieth parallel of north latitude its surface is swept by the brave west winds' of the northern hemisphere, and thus is turned aside and forced in an immense broad stream over the coasts of Oregon, Washington Territory, and British Columbia.

If the Gulf Stream has clothed Ireland with its robe of verdure, and made it the Emerald Isle,' the Kuro Siwo has done as much for the Aleutian Islands and Alaska. They are mantled with living green. The flocks scarcely need shelter in winter. If their soil is treeless, their Gulf Stream richly supplies them with timber for their canoes, and camphor wood of Japan and China for their furniture.

The hills of Russian America, like those of Norway, bristle with pines and firs down to the very seashore. There never was,' says Capt. M. F. Maury, the author of the Physical Geography of the Sea, 'an iceberg in the North Pacific ocean, and consequently the tender plants along its shores are never nipped down by the cold that the drifting islands of ice always engender. Therefore, we may conclude that, parallel for parallel, and altitude for altitude, the climate along the seashores of our newessedions are quite as mild, if not milder, than those of Northwestern Europe, and we know that the winter climate of England is not so severe as that of Virginia.'

Kotzebue, as long ago as 1815, remarked these facts, and especially commented upon the riches of the Arctic flora, amidst manifold variety of soil, on the rocky coast of St. Lawrence Bay (near Behring's Strait). Vessels in the North Pacific, when becoming clogged with icy crust on their rigging, along the Asiatic coast, run over toward the American coast to thaw out in the warm waters of the Kuro Siwo.

The climatic effect of this ocean stream is so great on the American Pacific slope, that about Puget's Sound the inhabitants can seldom fill their ice houses, and even in the great territories lying eastward as far as Idaho and Montana, among the upper waters of the Missouri and the Yellowstone, this climatic mellowness is experienced in the winter season. The report of explorations of the Yellowstone, made by Gen. Reynolds, of the Engineer Corps of the United States Army, who wintered, in 1860, in the valley of Deer Creek, in which the Northern Pace Road will attain its greatest elevation and cross the Rocky Mountains, says:

'Throughout the whole of the season's march, the subsistence of our animals had been obtained by grazing after we had reached camp in the afternoon, and for an hour or two between the dawn of day and our time of starting. The consequence was, that when we reached our winter quarters there were but few animals in the train that were in a condition to have continued the march without a generous grain diet. Poorer and more broken down creatures it would be difficult to find. In the spring all were in as fine condition for com

mencing another season's work as could be desired.. A greater change in their appearance could not have been produced, even if they had been grain-fed and stable-housed all winter. Only one was lost, the furious storm of December coming on before it had gained sufficient strength to endure it. This fact, that seventy exhausted animals, turned out to winter on the plains on the first of November, came out in the best condition, and with the loss of but one, is the most forcible commentary I can make on the quality of the grass and the harfer of the winter.'

This wonderful phenomenon is explained only by the potential agency of the ocea current; for, if it were not contiguous to the continent, the westerly winds would possess less vapor, and hence less heat would be liberated upon their condensation.

It is impossible to explain away the mild climate of western Europe, and the great north western Territories of the United States, without the agency of aqueous vapor, furnished from a warm sea, constantly supplied with fresh quantities of equatorial water; and such a condition implies the actual movement of the Gulf Stream to Britain in one case, and the Kuro Siwo to the Pacific coasts of America.

Professor Henry has said that the westerly sea winds dispute the credit of England's mild climate with the Gulf Stream. That is not unlike a case in which the steam-pipe of an engine should dispute with the boiler as to which was the most important part of the machinery.

The disciples of Mr. Findlay, anxious to anmilate the great oceanic currents at Newfoundland, and to say to its onward, flowing waters, thus far and no farther shalt thou come,' assume that, on reaching the Grand Banks, it has lost ten or fifteen degrees of its heat, and been cooled down suddenly by the cold water. Were this true, its thermic energy would still suffice to regulate the climates of western Europe. Mr. Croll, in his able paper in the London Philosophical Magazine, last year, showed that 'the quantity of heat conveyed by the Gulf Stream (limiting the term to the stream which flows through the Florida Pass) is equal to all the heat received from the

sun by 3,121,870 square miles at the Equator.' The area of the north Atlantic ocean, from the parallels of Florida to the Arctic circle, is about 8,000,000 square miles. M. Findlay,' says Mr. Croll, thinks that I have doubled the actual volume of the stream. Assuming that I have done so, the amount of heat carried by the stream would still be equal to all the heat received from the sun by 1,560,935 miles at the Equator. In this case, the quantity of heat carried by the Gulf Stream into the Atlac through the straits of Florida, to that received by this entire area from the sun, is as one to four. It, therefore, follows that one-fifth of all the heat possessed by the waters of the Atlantic over that area is derived from the Gulf Stream. The stoppage of the Gulf Stream, taking it at Mr. Findlay's estimate, would deprive the Atlantic of 77,479,650,000,000,000,000 foot pounds of energy in the form of heat per day!' To satisfy Mr. Findlay, Mr. Croll, basing his estimate on the current through the Florida Pass alone, halved that current. He should have doubled it, because, as I have elsewhere shown, and as all correct and recent hydro-graphic charts evidence, there is an immense flow or drift of hot equatorial waters, which moves off the northern coast of San Domingo toward the northwest and unites with the current of the Florida Pass, and the drift is larger than the current. Besides, the great specific heat of water (or its power to absorb heat in warming and to give out heat in cooling) is without a parallel, being 1.000 (one), while even that of iron is only 0.11379 (about one tenth.) The quantity of heat, therefore, absorbed by a pound of water in changing its temperature from 32° to 212°, Fahr., would suffice to raise a pound of iron from 32° to 1620°, a bright red heat; and, conversely, a pound of water in cooling from 212° to 32°, from the ice point to the boiling point, gives out as much heat as would a red hot cannon ball, of one pound weight, in cooling down to 32°! Were the Gulf Stream suddenly and squarely met and stopped near Newfoundland, and suddenly cooled down, it is easy to see the amount of felt or sensible heat it would give off would be intolerable. With the heat given off by this reduction of temperature, increased by that due to loss of motion by the

supposed concussion with polar waters, its briny billows would be as painful to the hand as the blacksmith's iron after it has become too stiff for his hammer, but is hot enough to repel the unwary touch. Such seas would be 'seas of fire,' utterly impassable to the mariner, and deadly to marine life!

Dr. Carpenter assumes that the Trade Winds can affect 'only the uppermost strata' of the tropical ocean, propelling these, by the vis a tergo, westward against the American Isthmus. He, in common with Capt. M. F. Mauryaintains that currents produced by the winds cannot extend to any depth, but are necessarily very shallow. If, as he says, the 'uppermost strata only are influenced by the sun, all the worse for the theory that the removal of the American Isthmus would not impair English climate, since, in this view, the uppermost layers of the trade-swept equatorial ocean would easily be transferred into the Pacific basin at Panama. But the truth is, the agency of perennial winds extends to greater depths than physicists generally suppose. It cannot be questioned that sudden disturbances and variable winds will not make themselves felt more than superficially. But, as Mr. Croll has forcibly said, 'prevailing winds which can produce such immense surface-flows as that of the great equatorial currents of the globe and the Gulf Stream, which follow definite directions, must communicate their motion to great depths, unless water be frictionless, a thing which it is not.' The mechanical 'drag' of the topmost layer sets in motion the layers beneath, successively and gradually, but surely, and there are not wanting instances in which the bottom of the ocean has been carved and sculptured into channels and grooves by the perpetual action and sharp tooth of deep and windmoved running water. But it never seems to have occurred to those philosophers who make the Gulf Stream, climatically, a myth, denying its influence on Western Europe, and explaining the mild temperature there by the S. W. or antiTrade Winds, that these very anti-trades powerfully conspire with the descending Polar current off Newfoundland and the rotation of the earth to force the Gulf Stream close over upon the British Isles. This is done by the mechanical 'drag'