296 SOILS. 



chain of the Lesser Antilles, along the southeast coast of the 

 United States (Florida, Georgia and South Carolina) ; but 

 owing to its greater rotational velocity it is soon, like the 

 winds of the same latitudes, deflected from a northward to a 

 NE. course, which carries it away from the American coast, 

 to impart some of its warmth, (probably mainly through the 

 winds that blow over it), to Great Britain and Ireland, Scandi- 

 navia, and Western Europe generally ; while the northern 

 American coast is left to be bathed by the icy polar current 

 flowing from the Arctic through Baffin's Bay, which carries 

 icebergs far to the south in the way of the transatlantic traffic 

 between the Eastern States and Europe, and causes a differ- 

 ence in climate that is well exemplified in the comparison of 

 the climate of New York with that of Naples, both lying in the 

 same latitude; and similarly of the bleak coast of Labrador 

 with that of Great Britain. 



The Japan Stream. On the eastern Asiatic Coast, a warm 

 current originating in the Sunda seas, flows off the coasts of 

 the Philippines and of China and bathes the Japanese islands; 

 hence it is known as the Japanese Current, or Kuro-siro. It is 

 partly this current which, failing to pass into the Arctic 

 through the shallow waters of Behring strait, renders the 

 coast climates of the northwest coast of America so much 

 milder and moister than is that in corresponding latitudes on 

 the east coasts of both continents. Alaska corresponds to Nor- 

 way in its moist, foggy and relatively mild coast climate; Brit- 

 ish Columbia, Washington and Oregon participate in the bene- 

 fits of the tempering influence of the return current of the 

 Kuro-siro. But as this return ("Alaska") current passes 

 southward into the warmer seas off the California coast, its 

 influence is reversed ; it becomes a cold current in the warm 

 waters of the Pacific, and the warm, moist air of the ocean 

 being carried by the westerly winds across this cold stream 

 which flows along the shore of California, in summer dense 

 fogs are formed, which render navigation difficult and pro- 

 duce a coast climate whose average summer and winter tem- 

 peratures (c. g. at San Francisco) may differ by only a few 

 degrees, viz., 15.5 and 13.0 C. (60 and 56 F.) ; so that a 

 change of clothing from season to season is hardly called for. 

 The Alaska Current leaves the immediate coast of California 



