G Fislicry Board for Scotland. 



With tliis object in view a greater number of bottles were put away 

 tlian in the former experiments, especially in the northern waters, 

 but the European War has interfered with the usual widely distributed 

 operations of the fishing fleets, and hence there are very few returns 

 to record. 



At intervals between April 1914 and August 1914, 1890 bottles, 

 numbered consecutively from 1b to 1890b, were put away from selected 

 positions, but so far only 32 of the series have been recovered. 



The observations are obviously too few in number on which to 

 base an independent investigation and so enable us to amplify and to 

 confirm or otherwise our previous work. 



Six of the 32 bottles recovered were adrift for less than 30 days. 

 These should be rejecied owing to tli^ unreliability of the speed 

 deduced from them, due to the short time they have been under water, 

 and to the excessive error thus caused in the average speed by even a 

 slight inaccuracy in estimating the positions of their points of departure 

 and recovery. 



Sixteen agree fairly well in direction with our previous results. The 

 remaining 10 have apparently been carried in an opposite direction, but 

 most of these bottles have drifted for a comparatively short distance, 

 and consequently do not have much influence on results. The two 

 bottles of group 138 are interesting, inasmuch as they were put away 

 at the same time and place, and picked up together 8 months later in 

 the same sweep of a trawler's net. 



The information revealed by the few bottles of this series that 

 have come to hand is, on the whole, confhcting and contradictory, and 

 I am inclined to think that in some cases the positions from which 

 they were trawled up has not been given with the same degTee of 

 accuracy as in former days owing to the unusual difficulties of naviga- 

 tion caused by lack of guiding lights, &c. 



Chas. H. Brown. 



Note on the Foregoing Paper. 



That the deep-water currents which course southward along the 

 north-east coast of Scotland bend round - again to the northward 

 somewhere in the region of the Witch Ground, is a fact which has 

 long been known, and has been duly depicted in Captain Brown's 

 earlier charts of the bottom-currents of the North Sea. - But the 

 evidence furnished in this paper that these currents not only bend 

 to the northward, but afterwards come round again in a complete 

 cyclonic eddy, is welcome confirmation of an important and long- 

 suspected hydrographical fact. 



From the very beginning of our investigations, in 1902, it has 

 been obvious that the hydrographical conditions in this region are 

 remarkable and peculiar. Professor Helland-Hansen, in his report 

 on our hydrographical investigations for that year,* called attention 

 to the cold but highly saline water in this region, showed evidence 

 from the distribution of salinity and temperature alone (deep-water 

 current experiments being then lacking) of a slow cyclonic motion 

 in the bottom layer, and stated that in all probability " there was an 

 * eddy ' formed in the North Sea, similar to that formed in the central 

 * First Report [Cd. 2G12] 1902-3 (1905), pp. 22, 23. 



