140 APPENDIX. 



Extract of a letter from Vice-Admiral Sir Alexander Milne, 

 K, C. B., to the President, Qoncerning the currents on the 

 N. E. coast of America. 



" I am much interested in the question of the currents, and during many 

 years that I navigated the coast of Nova Scotia, and between Halifax and 

 Bermuda, had invariably attended to the set of the Gulf Stream. The best 

 information, however, which has been published of its strength, &c. off the 

 coast of the United States, will be found in Blunt's American Coast Pilot, 

 from the survey and report of the Government Surveyors. My own observa- 

 tions extend more to the north, and give the northern limit, or rather a 

 north west limit, of which I will give you an abstract from my notes. I con- 

 ceive this limit is caused by the deep current coming in contact with the 

 shoals or soundings in some two or three hundred fathoms water extending 

 from the shore of Nova Scotia, after passing over this limit, or from the line 

 of the warm water into the cold, the currents become uncertain, and this is 

 the case all along the coast of Nova Scotia up to the latitude of Scatterie. 

 The other great current is the one from the Polar Regions, along the east 

 coast of Newfoundland, extending down to the latitude of Cape Race, when a 

 western part of it runs round it into the Bay of St. Mary's ; but the eastern 

 part becomes lost ; it is probably checked by a northern limit of the Gulf 

 Stream and turns it more into a north east direction. In the admiralty there 

 is no single volume specially devoted to these various currents ; but in Bay- 

 field's St. Lawrence, and the Nova Scotia Pilot, Rennells' currents, you will 

 find various extracts from the surveyor's report, but the outer currents, that 

 is, those distant from the shore, are but little known. * * * 



" I have no doubt that tropical seeds, fish, Crustacea, &c., are carried up to 

 northern latitudes and deposited by the Gulf Stream. Very much to my 

 surprise I saw a shoal of flying fish in Lat. 37° .50' N. Long. 64° 50' W., the 

 temperature of the water being 73°, air 71°. I never expected to have seen 

 them so far from a West Lidian fsea, although some few exist at Bermuda of 

 a small size, but those in the Stream were of a larger description of the West 

 Indian fish. They were very lively and rose in numbers. There is no record 

 of soundings on the north edge of the Gulf Stream, and I cannot find that 

 any sand &c. has ever been brought up by the lead ; no doubt it would be an 

 interesting source of investigation, but I see no prospect of its ever being 

 carried out by government, unless a special surveying vessel was employed to 

 trace the line of sounding from the eastward of Sable Island round to the 

 St. George's Shoals." 



"P. S. — The mean northern limit of the Gulf Stream between Halifax 

 and Bermuda from fourteen voyages was found to be in Lat. 40° 56* N., 

 Lone. 63° 45' W." 



