CURRENTS OF THE ATLANTIC 69 



North Equatorial Current, and accomplish the traverse to the West 

 Indies at an average rate of nearly nine miles a day ; whilst farther 

 south, in the latitude of the Cape Verde Group, the trans-oceanic 

 passage is performed at an average speed of nearly thirteen miles 

 a day. These conclusions are confirmed by the results of the Prince 

 of Monaco's experiments in 1886 opposite the coasts of France and 

 Portugal along the meridian of 17° 40' W. From this region the 

 daily drifting rate to the Canary Islands is placed at four and a half 

 miles and to the West Indies at ten and a half miles. Daussy, whose 

 paper on bottle-drift in this ocean (Comptes Rendus, 1839, p. 81) 

 has before been mentioned, places the daily speed of bottles in the 

 equatorial zone of the North Atlantic at eight to ten miles. 



An interesting case is recorded in the table of a bottle which 

 accomplished the whole of the passage from a point about 260 miles 

 off the south-west of Ireland to the south-eastern extremity of the 

 Bahamas in a minimum time of 597 days (U.S. chart, December 



1908, bot. 85). The greatest velocity referred to in the table in 

 connection with the passage in the North Equatorial Current was 

 attained by a bottle that travelled from mid- Atlantic to the West 

 Indian region at an average speed of 16-8 miles a day. It per- 

 formed the passage from 9° 51' N. lat. and 32° W. long, to St. Vincent, 

 a distance of 1660 miles, within ninety-nine days (U.S. chart, February 



1909, bot. 48). It is worth noting that the derelict American schooner 

 Alma Cummings was drifted at the rate of sixteen miles a day from 

 a position 600-700 miles west of the Cape Verde Islands to the Panama 

 Isthmus (see Note 15 of Appendix). A critical value attaches itself 

 to a bottle that was transported in the North Equatorial Current 

 from a position south of Cape Verde Group (lat. 14° 1' N. ; long. 

 25° 2' W.) to the Grenadines in 169 days, which gives a daily rate 

 of about thirteen miles. There could have been but little loss of 

 time in its recovery, since it was found afloat off the coast (see 

 Nautical Magazine for 1852, bot. 42, and 1853, p. 437). 



The individuality of the North Equatorial Current is not always 

 sufficiently recognised. It is something more than the North-east 

 Trade-drift. Between the parallels of 10° and 20° N. it is illus- 

 trated by about fifty bottle-tracks in Schott's maps and by nearly 

 half that number in the American charts examined, as well as by 

 about a dozen other examples from other sources. The part that 

 it takes in the circulatory movement of the waters of the north 

 Atlantic is strikingly exemplified in the results of the Prince of 

 Monaco's experiments in the temperate latitudes of the north-east 

 Atlantic, almost a tenth of the floats recovered having been found 

 in the West Indian region. All the months of the year are repre- 

 sented in the records at my disposal, and there is not a single instance 

 of a drift to the eastward in these latitudes (10°-20° N.) in the open 

 ocean. Always there is a steady flow to the west, with but little 

 of the " southing " one would expect in a mere trade- wind current. 



Drift-Rates from Tropical Africa to Brazil and the West 

 Indian Region in the Main Equatorial Current. — A much 

 greater velocity is regularly displayed by the Main Equatorial 

 Current as it traverses the Atlantic from the Gulf of Guinea to the 



