KUIIO SHIWO (Black Current). The gulf stream of the Pacific which rises near Formosa, as the westward-northern branch of the north-equatorial current of the Pacific, and flows upward past Kinshiu, Shikoku, and Hondo, islands of Japan, and past the Kurile chain; thence splitting into two branches, the smaller stream passes up through Behring's straits, the main volume scouring the Aleutian or Fox islands, sending a loop around the Alaskan coast: and thence bending southward to California, whence it bends westward past the Sandwich islands, and pursues its way past Formosa and Japan again. The color of the Kuro is of a deep blue, and its warm waters move at the rate of 3 m. an hour. In addition to its scientific and climatic significance and influence cn Japan, Alaska. and California, the problem of the origin of the races of America may receive new light through a study of the Japan current. A tree or junk, set in the Japan current,
if left to float, will strand on Alaska or California, or even upon the Hawaii islands. For 20 centuries Japanese fishing-boats have been blown or swept into the Kuro Shiwo, and the arrival or stranding of some of them on the coasts of America is not to be doubted. From 1872 to 1876 a record of no less than 49 Japanese junks met with or seen on American and Hawaiian shores was made out, and read by Mr. Chas Wolcott Brooks before the California academy of sciences, Mar. 1, 1875. Further research has disclosed a much larger number of waifs,all Japanese. See the summary in " The Mikado's Empire," p. 579. The similarity of the flora and fauna of the w. coast of North America will be understood from a further study of the Kuro Shiwo.