CURRENTS OF THE ATLANTIC 55 



traverse in the vicinity of Cape Hatter as. If we take a period of 

 years, they may be distributed, as shown in the preceding table, 

 over the whole stretch of seaboard from the north of Norway to 

 Morocco, which represents a range of about forty degrees of latitude. 

 These bottles were dropped over not only in different years, but in 

 different seasons and within an area covered by two degrees of 

 latitude. One could scarcely expect such a divergence of tracks in 

 the case of bottles thrown overboard together off the same headland. 

 Yet it may be large ; and in this connection reference may again be 

 made to the divergence of the eight bottles thrown over together off 

 Cape Hatteras (see p. 49). Of the five thrown up on the shores of 

 Europe, the extreme range in latitude was almost eleven and a half 

 degrees, the northernmost being cast up on the island of Colonsay off 

 the west coast of Scotland and the southernmost on the shores of the 

 Bay of Biscay in the vicinity of Arcachon. Yet we have to assume a 

 much greater divergence for the whole group of bottles, since three of 

 them were deflected south and were recovered on the Azores, the 

 Bahamas, and the Bermudas. 



Various disturbing influences doubtless affect in different years 

 and seasons the distribution of drift from the New World in its 

 traverse of the North Atlantic. But of this we may be assured that 

 there is no one tract of seaboard on the European side that receives 

 all its transatlantic drift from the same region of the New World. 

 The Irish coasts receive drift from all latitudes on the American side 

 of the North Atlantic between the Caribbean Sea and Davis Strait. 

 So also the North Cape of Norway receives drift alike from the 

 Greenland coasts, from off Cape Hatteras, and from the Florida seas. 

 For particulars relating to bottle-drift from Davis Strait and the 

 south end of Greenland reference may be made to the concluding 

 remarks of Note 27 of the Appendix. 



Coming to the Prince of Monaco's results in the second table, it 

 may be at first observed that they only lend themselves in part for 

 the discussion of the traverse of the North Atlantic from the New to 

 the Old World, since they are not concerned with the first half of the 

 passage from the Florida Straits to a line drawn from the Newfound- 

 land Banks to the Western Azores, and even with this limitation 

 their indications mainly apply to the southern portion of the drift 

 that the Gulf Stream bears eastward towards Europe. But what 

 we lose in one way we gain in another, since they offer a splendid 

 illustration of the circulatory movement of the surface-currents of 

 the North Atlantic, which formed one of the principal objects of this 

 unrivalled series of investigations. It will be observed that the 

 results for 1885 and 1886 mainly illustrate this southern divergence 

 of the drift, which begins to the north-west of the Azores and is 

 continued until after the 20th meridian of west longitude is crossed. 

 Of the eighty floats recovered in these two sets of observations, not 

 one was found north of the coasts of France, and ten of them, or a 

 proportion of 12 J per cent., were returned to the Prince of Monaco 

 from the West Indies. This is four times as great as that represented 

 in Table I. for bottles that in reaching the West Indian region have 

 practically performed the circuit of the North Atlantic; and it 



