830 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHEEIES 



(or of its discharge around Cape Breton) below the point to which winter chilling, 

 per se, and ice melting in situ, would reduce it. 



Schott (1897) and Hautreaux (1910 and 1911), abandoning the Labrador Current, 

 saw in the Gulf of St. Lawrence the source of the cold coast water as far west and 

 south as New York. This view is supported by so much evidence that in earlier 

 publications (Bigelow, 1915, 1917, and 1922) I have described the cold Nova Scotian 

 water that flows past Cape Sable into the Gulf of Maine as probably a direct con- 

 tinuation of the current that is known to flow out through Cabot Strait on the Cape 

 Breton side. 



Briefly stated, the evidence on which this view was based stood as follows up to 

 1922, when Canadian experiments with drift bottles threw new light on the subject: 



The enormous volume of fresh water poured yearly into the Gulf of St. Lawrence 

 by its tributary rivers, added to a deep current of slope water flowing in through 

 Cabot Strait on the bottom (Huntsman, 1924), apparently, too, with a balance of 

 inflow over outflow in the Straits of Belle Isle, and with the currents on the north side 

 of Cabot Strait usually inward, while the rain that falls on the surface of the Gulf of 

 St. Lawrence almost certainly exceeds the evaporation therefrom, make it certain 

 that the current flowing out via the south side of Cabot Strait discharges a large 

 volume of water. Experimental evidence substantiates this, for current measure- 

 ments by the tidal survey of Canada (Dawson, 1913) seemed to establish a constant 

 outflow there, at least 30 miles broad abreast of Cape North, with an average 

 velocity of about half a knot per hour at the surface, which Dawson (1913) termed 

 the "Cape Breton current," but was earlier known as the "Cabot current." 



Temperatures and salinities taken by the Grampus in the eastern side of the Gulf 

 of Maine, near Cape Sable, and as far east along the outer coast of Nova Scotia as 

 Halifax, in 1914 and 1915, pointed to a direct continuation of this "Cape Breton" or 

 "Cabot" current southwestward alongshore, nearly to the Gulf of Maine, during 

 these summers (Bigelow, 1917, p. 234). Futhermore, a dominant surface drift of 

 }4 knot per hour toward the southwest was recorded by the Ekman current meter off 

 Shelburne, on July 27 and 28, 1914 (station 10231), only 30 miles east of the entrance 

 to the Gulf of Maine. 



Thus the physical character of the water, combined with readings of the current 

 meter, seemed to show a direct surface drift from the northeast along the Nova Sco- 

 tian coast between Shelburne and Halifax, distinguishable by a considerable difference 

 in temperature and salinity from the salter, warmer water that bounded it on the sea- 

 ward side. These characteristics and the fact that we found such characteristically 

 Arctic components as Limacina helicina and Mertensia ovum among its plankton 

 seemed to classify it as actually the southernmost prolongation of the outflow from 

 Cabot Strait (Bigelow, 1917, p. 357). 



Observations taken by the Canadian Fisheries Expedition of 1915 (Bjerkan, 1919) 

 and returns from several series of drift-bottle experiments subsequently carried out 

 by the Biological Board of Canada in the years 1922, 1923, and 1924=' have proven 

 the circulation over the continental shelf along Nova Scotia to be of a nature much 



"Huntsman, 1925, and notes kindly contributed by him. 



