576 SCIENTIFIC RECORD FOR 1885. ^ 



The Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society for September 

 contain the following: ^' We received in the course of the past mouth 

 two communications relating to the picking up of bottles with inclosed 

 memoranda cast overboard by enterprising ship captains' with a view 

 to testing the direction of what may be called the secondary currents 

 of the Atlantic. One of the communications is from the German con- 

 sul at Fayal in the Azores, and is to the effect that one day, about the 

 beginning of July last, a bottle was i>icked up 'near the coast of the 

 island of Pico,' north latitude 38° 26', west longitude 28° 35', the contained 

 papers staging that it had been thrown overboard from the Hamburg 

 steamship "Bohemia" on August 23, 1884, in north latitude 42° 4', west 

 longitude 52° 12'. The inference to be drawn from this case is that the 

 southerly current thrown off by the Gulf Stream in this part of the At- 

 lantic is one of extreme slowness. The other communication is from 

 Herr H. Wolff, of Grand Popo, West Africa. Writing on the 30th day 

 of May last, he informs us that a negro in his employ found on the beach 

 near Grand Popo a bottle, the inclosed papers of which state it was 

 thrown overboard from the shij) "Patriarch" (from Newcastle, N. S. W,, 

 bound for London) on the 11th December, 1884, in north latitude 2° 46', 

 west longitude 22° 3'. This point is near the southern edge of the 

 Guinea current, which thus appears to have taken five months to carry 

 the bottle some 1,200 geographical miles from west to east." 



