828 BULLETIN OF THE BUEEAU OF FISHEBIES 



southern extension of the cold polar water." " Observers who have actually studied 

 oceanographic conditions first hand in the Grand Banks region are unanimous to this 

 effect. 



The evidence of temperature and salinity on which this general thesis rests is 

 set forth in detail in the successive reports of the patrol (see also Bjerkan, 1919; 

 Le Danois, 1924, p. 40, and 1924a, p. 46) and need not be repeated here. I need only 

 point out that any branch of the Labrador Current that might flow southward from 

 the banks would not only be betrayed by its temperature and salinity (p. 829) but 

 it would doubtless carry bergs with it in greater or less number from time to time. 

 Actually, however, not a single berg (except small ones drifting out from the Gulf 

 of St. Lawrence) was reported west of longitude 55° during the period from 1911 to 

 1924, very few west of longitude 52°, whereas some hundreds came drifting down 

 along the east slope of the Grand Banks during that period (see E. H. Smith, 1924, 

 chart P, showing distribution of ice bergs from 1911 to 1923). 



The results of the drift-bottle experiments carried out in eastern Canadian waters 

 within the past few years by the Biological Board of Canada have not yet been 

 published in detail. However, Dr. A. G. Huntsman kindly supplies the informa- 

 tion that they give no more suggestion of a definite stream from the Grand Banks 

 toward Nova Scotia than do the temperatures or ice drifts just discussed.^* 



In short, no actual evidence of such a current is forthcoming from recent inves- 

 tigations, but the reverse. I have no hesitation, therefore, in definitely asserting 

 that the Labrador Current does not reach, much less skirt, the coast of North Amer- 

 ica, from Nova Scotia southward, as a regular event, corroborating Jenkins's (1921, 

 p. 166) statement that it does not reach the coast of the United States. Conse- 

 quently this is not the direct source of the cold current that reaches the Gulf of 

 Maine from the east. If overflows of the Labrador Current do take place in this 

 direction they are of such rare occurrence that no event of this sort has yet 

 come under direct scientific observation. 



As Huntsman (1924, p. 278) points out, a certain amount of the water flowing 

 down from the Arctic may move westward and southwestward along the slope of 

 the continent as a constituent of the slope water (p. 842), so much warmed, however, 

 en route, by mixture with tropic water that if it reaches the Gulf of Maine at all it 

 does so as a warming and not as a cooling agent, and on bottom, not at the sur- 

 face. Labrador Current water in small amount may also reach the gulf indirectly 

 via the Gulf of St. Lawrence route, shortly to be discussed; but if so, its distinguish- 

 ing characters as an Arctic current are lost, and it becomes one of the constituents 

 of a coastal current. 



The physical characters of the cold band of water that hugs the outer coast of 

 Nova Scotia also forbid the idea that it draws direct from the Labrador Current. 

 According to the observations by the Scotia (Matthews, 1914), the records of the 

 Canadian Fisheries Expedition of 1915 (Bjerkan, 1919), and the much more exten- 

 sive data that have been accumulated during the years of the Ice Patrol, the 



" The reader is referred to Smith's chart (1924a, sketch 10, p. 150) for the normal distribution of the Arctic water around the 

 banks in the spring and early summer; also to his general scheme of circulation in the vicinity of the tail (Smith, 1924a, p. 135). 



"Huntsman's chart (1924, flg. 32) showing the complexity of the circulation between Nova Scotia and Newfoundland 

 Includes the most outstanding results of these experiments. 



