826 BULLETIN OP THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES 



Up to 1897 the supposed coldness of the coastal water along North America in 

 general, and any definite evidences or reports of a current from northeast to south- 

 west in particular, were usually classed as southward extensions from the Labrador 

 Current. Without much analysis this Arctic stream was generally thought to flow 

 down from the Grand Banks region, past Nova Scotia, and so southward along the 

 whole eastern seaboard of the United States, carrying to New England the cold 

 resulting from the melting of ice (floe and berg) in Baflins Bay or about the Grand 

 Banks. Some such southerly branch of the Labrador Current is taken for granted 

 in most of the older textbooks, charts, and discussions of North American hydrog- 

 raphy. Thus Libbey (1891, 1895), in his studies of temperature south of Marthas 

 Vineyard, definitely identified as such the cool band that he recorded along the con- 

 tinental edge in the offing of southern New England. This view was widely held 

 until recently. Sumner, Osburn, and Cole (1913, p. 35), for example, state, on the 

 authority of the United States Navy Department, that the Labrador Current flows 

 from the Grand Banks past Nova Scotia and so southward as far even as Florida, 

 narrowing from north to south. Kriimmel (1911) believes the polar water tends to 

 drift southwestward across the Grand Banks and so to Nova Scotia. Engelhardt 

 (1913, p. 9, chart B) did not doubt that the Labrador Current bathes our coasts at 

 least as far as the Gulf of Maine. Johnston (1923, p. 271) describes it as hugging 

 the coast of North America from Halifax to Cape Cod; and as recently as 1924 Le 

 Danois (1924, p. 14) wrote of the "dernieres eaux du courant du Labrador qui 

 longuent la cote des Etats Unis." 



On the other hand, Verrill (1873, p. 106; 1874), in the early days of the United 

 States Fish Commission, had maintained that the actual temperatures of the deep 

 strata of the Gulf of Maine did not suggest the effects of any Arctic current, though 

 he qualified this generalization by adding that the gulf receives accessions of cold 

 water, ultimately coming from the north, by the tides. 



It is obvious that for the Labrador Current to follow the track usually ascribed 

 to it implies a dominant cold drift setting southwestward from the Newfoundland- 

 Grand Banks region across the oceanic triangle that separates the Newfoundland 

 from the Scotian Banks, and so in over the latter toward the coast; but although a 

 current of this sort is represented on many charts, its supposed extension westward 

 from the Grand Banks to Nova Scotia seems to have been based more on theoretic 

 grounds (the assumed necessity for connecting the cool coastal water to the south- 

 ward with the Arctic flow from Baffins Bay) than on direct observation. Schott 

 (1897), who first attempted a detailed study of oceanography of the Grand Banks 

 region," also failed to find any dominant set from northeast to southwest across 

 the banks, in spite of the proximity of the Labrador Current, which has long been 

 known to skirt theii- eastern edge and sometimes to round the so-called "tail of the 

 bank" for a short distance westward and northwestward. He did, it is true, record 

 sporadic movements of this Arctic water in over the banks, but he believed them 

 too small in volume and too irregular in occurrence to be anything but temporary 

 surface currents caused by the northeast winds, which often blow fresh there. His 

 conclusions were based on so many records of temperature and on measurements of 

 the current taken from fishing vessels lying at anchor on the banks that they forni 



