42 Proceedings of the Uoijal Irish A cadetny. 



the 30th meridiau of west longitude, there is ample proof that floating objects 

 do somehow make the passage. For instance, a vessel abandoned off Baltimore 

 in March, 1888, was found ten months later stranded in the Hebrides about 

 3,200 miles to the eastward.^ During this passage the derelict was observed 

 at intermediate points, and for the greater part of its course was water- 

 logged, with the decks awash. One of the earliest of many similar instances 

 is that given by Pennant, wlio tells us that the mast of the Tilbury man-of- 

 war, burnt in Jamaica, was found stranded on the west coast of Scotland.^ 

 Again, numerous test-bottles and floats thrown overboard at various points 

 iu the Atlantic have been picked up on tlie western shores of Europe, several 

 of them on the west coast of Ireland. An early instance of tliis bottle drift 

 is given by Kennel in his work on the Atlantic currents, wliere he records 

 the discovery off tlie Island of Aran in Donegal on the 20th May, 1820, 

 of a bottle thrown overboard, 300 miles south-east of Cape Cod, on the 

 20lh June, 1819.' 



How these floating olijects make their passage from mid-Atlantic to the 

 European shores is not quite clear. A wide-spread drift or slow translation 

 of warm water, efTected at a rate which has been «stimated at about four 

 miles a day, sets north-eastward from mid-Atlantic towards tlie European 

 ahorcs, and, passing along the Norwegian coast, penetrates into tlie Arctic 

 rcgious as far as the northern extremity of Nova Zembla. Tlirougbout its 

 course Ibis great drift, the European Stream, as it has been called, maintains 

 a tempeiuturc many degrees above that of the supeiincunibent air. Whetiier 

 this alow drift bo due to the pressure of the Gulf Stream, to the prevalence 

 of the westerly winds known as the Anti-trades, or to a great oceanic circula- 

 tion whereby the cold watei°s of the Polar seas are exchanged with the heated 

 water of the Equatorial regions, or whether it be due to all of these causes 

 combined, is still, and will probably long remain, matter for discussion. This 

 much, however, seems clear, that in the Gulf Stream, supplemented by this 

 diift and by spells of westerly winds, we liave an agency fully competent to 

 effect the transport of floating bodies across the 4,000 jniles of ocean from 

 U»e West Lidies to the Atlantic shores of Ireland. 



Further support to the hypothesis of natural transport by currents, drifts, 

 and winds as opposed to introduction by human agency and shipwreck may be 

 drawn from the fact that the tropical seeds and fruits under discus.sion have 

 never, so far as I can discover, been recorded from the drift of the eastern shores 

 of the Briti.sh Isles. And, to conclude this train of cumulative evidence in favour 



■ "PlaDts, Seods, and Currents," p. 473. 



'' "Voyage to the Hebrido*," p. 232. 



' " lavostigation of the Ourroata of the Atlantic Ocean." 1888. 



