364 -THE ATLANTIC. [CHAP. Vv. 
marked in its phenomena and in its results; but the continuity 
of the meridional land-beltsis broken nearly opposite the point 
where the current has its greatest force, and a great part of that 
force is lost, and a considerable portion of the current itself is 
dissipated, among the passages of the Malayan Archipelago. 
Perhaps even a larger proportion of the Pacific equatorial cur- 
rent than of the Atlantic current is diverted northward, for it is 
guided by the long crescentic broken barrier consisting of the 
Fiji Islands, the New Hebrides, and Papua; and the branch 
which ‘passes down the east coast of Australia is comparatively 
insignificant ; but the northern division passes at once into the 
region of the monsoons, where it is baffled for half the year, 
and one is almost surprised to find the Kuro Siwa a powerful, 
tolerably permanent warm current, sweeping round the south 
of Japan, and exercising in the North Pacific a thermic influ- 
ence which is certainly comparable with that of the Gulf-stream. 
The two diagrams, Fig. 100 and Fig. 101 respectively, are curves 
constructed from serial soundings taken in the Atlantie and in 
the Pacific, as near as possible to the parallel 35° N., and they 
show fairly the correspondence in principle and the divergence 
in detail in the distribution of heat in the two seas. The ab- 
normal curve No. 44, in Fig. 100, is from the sounding in the 
Labrador current within the cold-wall of the Gulf-stream ; and 
the abnormal curve No. 240, Fig. 101, is constructed from a se- 
rial sounding in a cold current which passes into the North Pa- 
cific from the Sea of Okotsk, probably through Pico or Boussole 
Channel. This may be only a summer current, and due in a 
great measure to the melting of the snow over the enormous 
drainage area of the Amur and the Southern Siberian rivers. 
Curves No. 80 and A and B in Fig. 100 are introduced to show 
what we are inclined to regard as the underlap of the water of 
the equatorial reflux, steadily cooling but still abnormally warm, 
against the coast of Europe. The tables on page 367 give the 
positions of the serial soundings: 
