TO THE .ARCTIC REGIONS. 13 
was found. Besides the request, the lat. and lone. 
of the ship at the time, and the temperature of the 
air, and sea-water, the force and direction of the 
wind, and the state of the weather, were also inserted 
on it. As the whole may be better understood by 
giving a copy of the paper itself, I shall insert in the 
Appendix all that it contained. It is intended to 
throw one of these papers overboard every day in 
order -to increase the probability of some of them 
being picked up. 
Their object is to afford data for detecting 
the force and direction of currents in these seas. 
By knowing the time and place where they were 
thrown into the sea, and the place and time, where, 
and when they were found, it is very clear that this 
object may, in a great measure, be determined, for 
the elapsed time will give the force, and the relative 
situation the direction of the current; that is, if the 
bottle is found immediately, it is driven on shore, or 
out of the influence of the current. 
Some of the bottles that we threw overboard last 
year for the same purpose, tended very materially to 
throw some light on this subject. One of them had 
already been received at the Admiralty some time 
before we sailed ; it was picked up in Killala Bay, in 
Ireland, about the latter end of March, and it appeared 
by the date upon it, and the geographical situation 
of the ship at the time it was dispatched, that it 
floated about one thousand and eighty miles in the 
course of ten months, which is upward of three miles 
a day during the whole time. 
There was another of our bottles picked up by a 
Danish vessel some time before we left England, but 
zo 
