94 
ORIGIN OF LIFE IN AMERICA 
amphiaetus, Japanese species are found to occur in approxi¬ 
mately the same latitude on the American coast, without 
obvious connection by way of Alaska. 
The Black Stream of Japan, the “ Kuroshiwo,” comparable 
to the Gulf Stream of the Atlantic Ocean, keeps outside the 
island chain of the east coast of Asia, skirts the Aleutian 
Islands, and then makes itself felt on the south coast of 
Alaska. The fish fauna of the northern Sea of Japan has 
nineteen per cent, of species in common with the south coast 
of Alaska. With the Bering Sea the latter has about twice 
as many fishes in common. All of these are forms frequent¬ 
ing cold seas.* 
Dr. Dallf recently expressed the opinion, based on a 
study of Tertiary marine deposits, that the conditions indi¬ 
cated by the faunas of the post-Eocene Tertiary on the Pacific 
coast from Oregon northward are a cool temperate climate 
in the early and middle Miocene, a warming up towards the 
end of the Miocene, culminating in a decidedly more warm- 
water fauna in the Pliocene, and a return to cold, if not prac¬ 
tically arctic, temperature in the Pleistocene. Further south, 
on the Californian Coast, the Tertiary marine faunas, espe¬ 
cially those of San Pedro, have been very carefully studied 
by Professor R. Arnold. The Pliocene fauna, he remarks, 
though not quite similar to the fauna at present living off 
San Pedro, still contains many species which now only occur 
north of that locality. Many of these northern species are 
limited in range to the boreal waters north of Puget Sound. 
Hence he concludes that these Pliocene deposits were laid 
down in water much colder than that now found off San Pedro. 
In the lower beds of the Pleistocene, he continues, the cold 
climatic conditions prevalent during the later Pliocene were 
giving place to a warmer climate, which had its effect on 
the boreal species of San Pedro. Southern species gradually 
increase in number 'while northern ones become scarcer. 
Finally the upper Pleistocene beds contain 14’2 per cent, 
of species that are only now found living south of San Pedro, 
* Schmidt, P., “ Verbreitung der Fische im Stillen Ocean,” p. 564. 
t Dali, W. H., “Climatic Conditions at Nome,” p. 457. 
