628 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



Of these streams there are four, the two grandest and greatest of which are 

 thrown off to the southward, from the equatorial currents of the Pacific and 

 Indian Oceans; whilst the remaining two are thrown off northwardly from the 

 tropics into the north Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The first of these latter is 

 the Gulf Stream, whose general character is familiar to us all. The other is the 

 KuroSiwo, of more recent discovery, which starts from the southeast coast of 

 China, and running northeastwardly with a velocity of from thirty to eighty miles 

 a day, and losing only i° of warmth for every 300 miles that it travels, washes 

 the south coast of Japan, and spreading a mantle of tepid water of upwards of 

 70° of temperature over the surface of the north Pacific, envelops the whole 

 west coast of our continent from Behring's Straits to the Equator with its genial 

 warmth, and gives to that region the delicious climate which is now becoming 

 so well known to us all. 



Now, whilst the sun by its heat in the tropics has prepared these waters for 

 rapid evaporation by giving to them their high temperature, yet the sun itself 

 cannot and does not evaporate any portion of them, except through the medium 

 of the atmosphere. And the power of the atmosphere to produce this evaporation 

 is in exact proportion to its low temperature and its dryness as compared with 

 the water at the time of its contact with these tepid waters from the Equator. 



The prevailing winds in the temperate zones are from the westward. The 

 west winds which come to the north Pacific from the plains of Central Asia and 

 Siberia are cold, contracted and dry, with a temperature frequently below the 

 freezing point, so that when they reach the tepid waters of the Kuro-Siwo they 

 at once respond to the warm and expanding influence of these tropical waters,^ 

 and as they expand drink up by 'evaporation prodigious quantities of the latter, 

 which, as invisible vapor or fogs, are borne eastwardly across the surface of the 

 ocean to the west coast of our continent. 



That portion of these winds that reaches our coast about the mouth of the 

 Columbia River are chilled by the Cascade Mountains, and made to yield such 

 quantities of rain as to have produced a forest growth of vegetation so rank 

 and majestic as to be unrivalled by any other forests of North America ; and 

 just north of the Cascades come the open gateways through the mountain ranges, 

 guarded only by the detached and hoary peaks before named, between which 

 these west winds carry their burdens of warmth and moisture to gladden and fat- 

 ten the face of the interior of the continent, but which on their way pay such 

 tribute to these majestic sentinels as to clothe and crown them in the purity of 

 everlasting snow, and then reach the elevated region of the Yellowstone Park 

 with still abundant moisture, which is dealt out from their hitherto invisible treas- 

 ures with such royal profusion as to give birth to and keep in perennial flow the 

 grandest system of rivers on the face of the globe, viz : the Columbia, McKenzie, 

 Saskatchawan, Assiniboine, Yellowstone, Missouri and Colorado, which, radiat- 

 ing north, east, south and west from this immediate region, and with courses of 

 thousands of miles, each distribute their waters into all the oceans surrounding 



