54 PLANTS, SEEDS, AND CURRENTS 



Charts of the North Atlantic published by the United States Hydro- 

 graphic Office for the eight months October to May 1900-8, the 

 rest being supplied by Dr. Schott's memoir Die Flaschenposten der 

 Deutschen Seewarte (1897), the Nautical Magazine for 1852, and in a 

 few cases from sundry sources. The second table deals with the 

 results of the researches of the Prince of Monaco, and have been pre- 

 pared from his papers in the volumes of the Comptes Rendus from 

 1885 to 1892. 



In the first table there are given the records for 107 bottles that 

 started from the four regions A, B, C, D in their traverse of the 

 North Atlantic. Since all the four starting-places lie in the main 

 track of the drifting bottles from the tropics of the New World to 

 the shores of Europe, the limits being determined by the data them- 

 selves, it follows that all the materials in this table may be used to 

 illustrate the passage of West Indian bottle-drift to the shores of 

 Europe. But this table tells us more. It tells us of the bottles that 

 were deflected south when approaching European waters, and were 

 ultimately returned to the West Indian region in the North Equatorial 

 Current. In other words, it also illustrates the completion of the 

 circuit of the North Atlantic. With this last, however, we are not 

 here specially concerned, except in so far as it informs us of the 

 distribution of bottle-drift that leaves West Indian waters on its 

 transatlantic passage. 



The course pursued is determined by the Gulf Stream. After 

 emerging from the Florida Strait, the bottles are borne northward 

 by this current past Cape Hatteras towards Nova Scotia and New- 

 foundland, and then eastward with a northerly trend towards Europe, 

 spreading out in a fan-like fashion after crossing the 40th meridian 

 of west longitude to the north-west of the Azores. About 18 per 

 cent, of the bottles dealt with in the table were soon diverted south 

 and stranded on the Azores, but by far the greater number, amount- 

 ing to about 75 per cent., were distributed over all the exposed 

 coasts from the North Cape of Norway to Morocco. The remaining 

 seven of the hundred bottles, still speaking of them in a proportional 

 sense, were borne in the Portuguese or North African Current yet 

 further south. One was beached on Madeira, two on the Canary 

 Islands, and four came within the influence of the North Equatorial 

 Current and were ultimately recovered in the Lesser Antilles, the 

 Bahamas, and the Bermudas. Of those just mentioned as reaching 

 the West Indian region, one from the middle of the North Atlantic 

 was picked up in the Turks Islands at the south-east end of the 

 Bahamas, whilst two from off Cape Hatteras were found respectively 

 on the island of Anguilla in the Lesser Antilles and on that of Eleu- 

 thera in the North- west Bahamas, the circuit of the North Atlantic 

 being almost completed in the last case. 



It may here be observed that the fan-like distribution of bottle- 

 drift from the New World on the coasts of Europe, though naturally 

 most pronounced when we lay down on a chart the tracks of numbers 

 of bottles from the same locality covering a period of several years, 

 is also well exhibited in the case of bottles thrown over together. 

 This is well exemplified in the case of bottles that begin the ocean 



