38 



The Atlantic 



After an appropriate interval of months or years some of these trees 

 of various Central American species have turned up as driftwood 

 along the beaches of the European coast. The first student who 

 found and identified one of these trees no doubt thought that he had 

 come upon a rare curiosity, but further study has shown that such 

 trees and timbers have turned up in Europe over centuries and have 

 been found in many places all the way from the Atlantic coast of 

 Spain to Norway and the North Cape. In fact examples have been 

 found far in the Arctic seas collected from the shores of Spitsbergen, 

 Novaya Zemlya and other coasts. 



The Atlantic makes this complicated delivery of lumber in the fol- 

 lowing way: The logs discharged by the Central American rivers into 

 the western Caribbean are driven by prevailing winds and currents 

 northwest between Yucatan and Cuba; they are then in the Gulf of 

 Mexico and could here be joined by trees from northern Yucatan 

 and the eastern coast of Mexico; after a loop through the Gulf they 



