Page:TASJ-1-1-2.djvu/303



there can be no doubt of the great interest attached to the subject of this paper, it is, at the same time, one on which it is most difficult to gather a sufficient amount of information to render any remarks upon it either practically useful or sufficiently interesting to the members of this Society. The statements made in what follows have been gathered, to a great extent, from a considerable experience of the coast, and, while they may be, so far as they go, considered reliable, their incompleteness is due to the difficulties of obtaining information on the subject. This, of course, can only be properly procured by means of minute observations and records taken with instruments, and from vessels especially devoted to the purpose.

The stream known as the Japan Stream, which flows regularly along the southern Coasts of Japan, has been termed the “Gulf Stream” of the Pacific, from its supposed resemblance to the stream known by that name in the Atlantic. Indeed, the two streams are very similar in many ways. They rise in nearly the same latitude, and the course or direction in which both flow are almost