PHYSICAL OCEANOGEAPHY OF THE GULP OF MAINE 899 



a very uniform track, which for the Cape Ann and Cape Cod lines veered unmistak- 

 ably through southeast, east, and northeast (p. 889). The time intervals are consist- 

 ent with this, also, the great majority ranging between 70 and 105 days, irrespective of 

 which line the bottle in question was launched from. For any of the bottles from the 

 Cape Elizabeth line to have reached the southern shore of the Bay of Fundy by the 

 alternative route via the coast of Maine and through the Grand Manan Channel 

 would have involved a drift from north to south across the Bay of Fundy directly 

 contrary to the dominant set established there by Mavor's (1922) experiments with 

 drift bottles, as well as by measurements of currents (p. 861). Such an explanation 

 would also be contrary to the time intervals, for the two bottles that went from the 

 ofHng of Cape Elizabeth to Grand Manan and to The Wolves (Nos. 43 and 88) and 

 were not reported until 103 and 104 days after release, while two others, set afloat 

 near by (Nos. 99 and 105), were reported from the Nova Scotian side of the Bay of 

 Fundy in 80 to 98 days. 



By this reasoning the bottles that went to Penobscot Bay from the inner end 

 of line A, and to the coast of Maine farther to the eastward, may safely be credited 

 with essentially the same route as those that reached this same sector of the coast 

 from the outer end of this line, circling anticlockwise at first toward the Bay of 

 Fundy, to return westward again. The time intervals between release and recovery 

 (80 days for No. 65, picked up at Jonesport; 63 days for No. 98, reported near Swans 

 Island; and 103 days for No. 87, found at Matinicus) favor this interpretation. 



The general uniformity, both of localities of recovery and of time intervals, for 

 the outer two-thirds of line A, indicates a well-developed, dominant set of the anti- 

 clockwise sort just outlined. This, however, seems hardly to have affected the sur- 

 face water within 15 miles of the land at the time, judging from the regional disper- 

 sion of the returns from the inner end of line A and from the fact that the time 

 intervals between release and recovery vary widely for these, quite independent of 

 the distances which this group of bottles made good. Thus we find intervals rang- 

 ing from 25 to 77 days for 7 bottles that were picked up in the Casco Bay region, 

 15 to 30 miles from the points of launching, and 5 to 72 days for 5 bottles recovered 

 along the southern side of Cape Elizabeth after journeys of 8 to 23 miles. One was 

 found at Monhegan Island (35 miles) in 47 days, but another, reported from Danis- 

 cove (25 miles), was not found until 75 days had passed. 



Of course, little stress can be laid on the time interval for any one bottle, because 

 there is no knowing how long it may have lain on the shore, overlooked; but our 

 general experience suggests that if bottles are not reported comparatively soon after 

 stranding they are either broken or buried in windrows of seaweed and never after 

 heard from at all. Consequently, when time intervals vary widely for bottles 

 drifting only a short distance to a coast as frequented as the Casco Bay region is, 

 contrasting with uniformity of intervals for bottles journeying right across the gulf, 

 it is obvious that the former did not follow as definite a set as the latter. On the 

 whole, the regional distribution of the localities of recovery for the inner end of this 

 Cape Elizabeth line trends eastward across Casco Bay, pointing to an irregular 

 eddying drift in that direction as involving the mouth of the latter. Cape Elizabeth, 

 however, seems to have bounded this eddy on the south at the time, witness the 

 several strandings to the south of the cape (fig. 181); the fact that one bottle, set 



