THE PRINCE OF MONACO 127 



by the Prince, communicated to the French Academy of 

 Sciences in 1919, dealing with the futm-e of the floating 

 mines which have gone adrift as a result of operations in the 

 recent war, and showing that some of them may be a danger 

 to navigation in certain parts of the North Atlantic for at 

 least four years from that date. He showed that those from 

 mine-fields in the North Sea will eventually find their way to 

 the fjords of Norway, while those from the western shores of 

 Europe will enter into the great Atlantic circulation deter- 

 mined by the influence of the Gulf Stream, and will be 

 carried south towards the Cape Verde Islands, and will then 

 work westward in the equatorial current towards America, 

 visiting the Antilles and Bahamas, They wiU then fall into 

 the current of the Gulf Stream, which will enable them to 

 reach Bermuda on the way to the Azores, so circulating 

 round the Sargasso Sea between the fiftieth latitude to the 

 north and the fifteenth to the south. Some may continue 

 to circulate in this great cycle, while others may be carried 

 north-east towards the western coasts of the British Isles. 

 Those that take this latter course will eventually reach the 

 Norwegian fjords, and probably, in the end, the Arctic Ocean 

 by the North Cape, and be, no doubt, ultimately destroyed in 

 their encounter with the ice. The Prince calculates that the 

 rate of wandering of these mines in the great Atlantic circu- 

 lation will be about five miles per twenty-four hours. He 

 gives some useful advice to navigators as to the safest routes 

 and the lines of greatest danger in crossing the Atlantic, and 

 adds that the coasts of the United States will be protected 

 against this danger of mines coming from Europe by the cold 

 Labrador current which descends from the north to the 

 coasts of Florida. 



As a further contribution to oceanography the Prince has 

 had prepared, and has published at Monaco, a very valuable 

 " Carte Generale Bathymetrique des Oceans," on which are 

 collected all the really accurate deep-water soundings of 

 the various expeditions. Shortly before his death he had 



