72 PLANTS, SEEDS, AND CURRENTS 



For obvious reasons it would be very difficult to demonstrate this 

 circuit for any particular bottle. The nearest approach to the 

 complete record is that of the bottle, already alluded to, which was 

 picked up on the west coast of Ireland thirty-four months after it 

 had been cast over to the westward of the Cape Verde Islands. It 

 is easy to construct the circuit piecemeal fashion. A striking instance 

 is afforded by two bottles which in one case reached the South- 

 eastern Bahamas from off the coast of Ireland, and in the other 

 reached the Irish coast from the South-eastern Bahamas, the track 

 of the North Equatorial Current being followed in the first case 

 and the Gulf Stream route in the second case. The data for these 

 observations are given in Note 20 of the Appendix ; but it may here 

 be stated that the total period, calculated up to the dates of the 

 recoveries, amounts to 934 days, and the average drifting rate to 

 nearly ten miles a day. This period is identical with that given 

 under G in the above table, though to that period about a hundred 

 days should be added for the passage from the South-eastern Bahamas 

 to the Florida seas. . . . Derelicts would probably perform the 

 circuit of the North Atlantic in a shorter time. Whilst the circuit, 

 beginning and ending with the Florida seas, would require about 

 three years for a bottle, it might not require more than two years 

 for a derelict. The Alma Cummings, when drifting in 553 days from 

 off Cape Hatteras to the Panama Isthmus, nearly described the 

 circle; but since the wreck was deflected south to the westward of 

 the Azores, its passage was somewhat shortened (see Note 15). 



The Distribution in the West Indian Region of Seed-drift 

 Brought by the North and Main Equatorial Currents as 

 illustrated by Bottle-drift. — By following the indications sup- 

 plied by the floating bottle in this matter we shall be determining 

 the distribution over the West Indian region of the seed-drift brought 

 in the North and Main Equatorial Currents. Bottles arriving in 

 the first-named current strike the South-eastern Bahamas and the 

 Lesser Antilles, in the last locality usually north of Barbados. Of 

 those reaching the south-eastern islands of the Bahamas the great 

 majority are stranded in that neighbourhood; but a few, as is shown 

 in Note 13, are carried in the prevailing westerly drift-current to the 

 Florida seas. However, as is indicated in the table on p. 57, only 

 about 25 per cent, of the bottles brought to the West Indian region 

 in the North Equatorial Current are beached on the Bahamas. 

 About 10 per cent, are carried beyond that group and are thrown 

 up on the north coasts of the Greater Antilles. All the rest strike 

 the line of the Lesser Antilles, but generally north of Barbados, 

 and more than half of them are stranded on those islands. The 

 survivors (about 27 per cent, of the original total) pass between 

 the islands into the Caribbean Sea. Most of them are stranded on 

 the south coasts of the Greater Antilles and on the shores of Central 

 America; but a few (amounting to about 7 per cent, of the original 

 total) are carried through the Straits of Yucatan into the Gulf of 

 Mexico and are ultimately beached on the shores of that gulf and 

 on the coasts of Florida. Several examples are given in the charts 

 of bottles that illustrate this circuitous route from the Lesser Antilles 



