50 PLANTS, SEEDS, AND CURRENTS 



Cape Hatter as on October 26, 1905, and they were recovered on 

 June 10 and 19, 1907, in the vicinity of Bray Head and Cape Clear 

 on the south-west shores of Ireland, about fifty miles apart as the 

 bird flies. A very remarkable instance of this kind is recorded by 

 Mr. Wood-Jones in the Indian Ocean, though there was here an 

 unexplained delay in the recovery of one of the bottles. Two bottles, 

 dispatched on November 15, 1905, from Keeling Atoll, were found 

 at " exactly the same spot " at Brava on the coast of equatorial 

 East Africa in 1° 6' N. lat. The first was recovered on May 27, 

 1906, and the second on July 11, 1907 (Coral and Atolls, pp. 294-5, 

 1910). It is probable that these two bottles drifted together and 

 that from some cause the second was overlooked. 



But this is the exception and not the rule. Rennell, in his book 

 on the Atlantic currents, refers to two bottles thrown over from 

 H.M.S. Newcastle on June 20, 1819, rather over 300 miles south-east 

 of Cape Cod in localities about twenty miles apart, one of which was 

 picked up on May 20, 1820, on the north coast of San Jorge in the 

 Azores, and the other near the island of Aran on the north-west coast 

 of Ireland on June 2, 1820, the difference in latitude represented by 

 the divergence of the two tracks being about sixteen degrees. [These 

 two cases are included by Becher in his list of bottle-drifts in the 

 Nautical Magazine for 1852 (Nos. 97 and 98), but the positions there 

 given of the starting-places are about sixty miles apart.] The 

 separation of bottles thrown over together may be soon effected, 

 even where there is no reason to suspect the presence of contiguous 

 currents. Schott (p. 18) alludes in this connection to Hensen's 

 experiment in Kiel Bay with ten weighted glass globes, which after 

 twenty-four hours displayed an extreme separation of a German 

 mile (nearly five English miles). Of course, when the bottles are 

 dropped overboard in the disputed area between two contrary cur- 

 rents, as in the case of the Main Equatorial Stream and the Guinea 

 Current, great divergencies are to be looked for. A striking instance 

 is mentioned in Note 19 of the Appendix. Of two bottles that were 

 cast over together in the vicinity of St. Paul's Rocks in the middle 

 of the Atlantic, one was thrown ashore on the coast of Sierra Leone 

 and the other on the shores of Nicaragua. 



The Divergent Tracks of Derelicts and Casks. — Derelicts 

 display some curiously divergent courses in the North Atlantic. 

 Reference is made in Notes 15 and 16 of the Appendix to two dere- 

 licts which commenced their drifting passage within sixty miles of 

 each other, about 200 or 250 miles north of Cape Hatteras, at the 

 same season (February and March), but in different years. One was 

 stranded in the Hebrides and the other on the Panama Isthmus, 

 after periods of ten and eighteen months respectively. Water- 

 logged derelicts are especially instructive, since their position at 

 different stages of their track is often determined by the observations 

 of passing vessels. In the Nautical Magazine for 1843 (p. 757) and 

 1852 (p. 672) allusion is made to the drift of some casks of blubber 

 from the ship William Torr that was wrecked in Davis Straits. As 

 they were carried eastward and southward towards Ireland and the 

 north of France they became more and more separated, so that 



