CURRENT PAPERS. 203 
Out of the one hundred and fifty-four papers in the following 
list eighteen are outside the limits of the chart, and sixty could 
not be plotted either, because the track followed was so small 
that it would not show on this small scale chart, or because there 
were already too many plotted in its particular area; the remain- 
ing seventy-six papers are shown on the chart. 
In my previous paper on current papers it was mentioned as 
an interesting fact, and it is accentuated in this one, that a large 
proportion of the papers which came back to me have been put 
into the sea a few miles from the land; in the present list forty- 
seven or thirty per cent of those received have made these very 
short journeys. In the first list, twenty-one per cent. of the 
papers were of the same class. As a rule papers of this class 
cannot be effectively plotted in a map of such small scale as this 
one. 
To avoid mistakes, it may be stated here that the lines plotted 
on the chart are not intended to convey the idea that the actual 
tracks of the bottles are known, only two points in its journey are 
known: the place it was put into the sea and where it was found, 
the lines are simply the shortest lines to connect these two points. 
Neither is it supposed that the date of finding the bottle on shore 
is necessarily the day it landed. It is possible, nay probable, that 
Some of them rest weeks or perhaps months before they are found. 
Nevertheless, in cases where a number of papers have made tracks 
Over the same ocean their several rates of motion do not differ 
materially from the mean, and are much more nearly alike than 
~ might expect them to be under the circumstances, from which 
it may be inferred that the bottles, as a rule, do not rest long 
before they are found. For instance, three papers, Nos. 157, 
463 and 164, were set afloat off Cape Horn, and followed as 
indicated by the lines, nearly the same tracks, and their daily 
rates are 9-0 miles, 7-9 miles, and 10°3 miles over distances of 
9,517, 8,627 and 9,585 miles. No. 163, the one that made least 
Progress, was picked up on the western shore of the Australian 
