MAKINE BIOLOGICAL STATION AT PORT ERIN. 41 



records of weather for the last twelve months, and we 

 have noted opposite the bottles, from whose travels we 

 are drawing any conclusions, an approximate estimate of 

 the wind influences during the period when the bottle 

 may have been at sea. There have been a few rather 

 extraordinary journeys, e.g., one let off in the middle of 

 Port Erin Bay on April 23rd was found at Fleetwood on 

 July 6th ; another let off at Bradda Head on June 3rd 

 was found on Pilling Sands (near Fleetwood) on July 24th. 



It is important to notice that the bottles may support 

 one another's evidence, those set free about the same spot 

 often being found in the same locality, e.g., out of a batch 

 of 6 set free off New Brighton, on Oct. 9th, 1895, 5 have 

 come back and all were found at about the same place. 



Dr. Fulton, who is conducting a similar inquiry by 

 means of drift bottles, in the North Sea, for the Scottish 

 Fishery Board, writes to me that he is now having large 

 numbers of his bottles returned to him from the Continent, 

 chiefly Schleswig and Jutland. And he draws the 

 conclusion, " There is no doubt that the current goes 

 across, down as far as Norfolk — none of the bottles have 

 been found south of Lincoln and none in Holland — and 

 this will explain the presence of banks and shallows 

 in the south and east and the immense nurseries of 

 immature fish there." No detailed account of these 

 experiments on the Scottish coast has yet appeared, and 

 it will be interestiDg to compare our results with them at 

 some future period.* 



What is already well-known t in regard to the tidal 



* Since the above was in type an account has been published. 



tAll the accounts I have had access to seem based upon Admiral 

 Beechey's observations published in the Philosophical Trans, for 1848 and 

 1851. Admiral Wharton, F.R.S., the present Hydrographer t<> the Navy, 

 has kindly informed me that Admiral Beechcy took his observations by the 

 direct method of anchoring his ship in various places and then observing the 

 direction and force of the tide. 



