CURRENT-CONNECTIONS IN S. HEMISPHERE 295 



On the southern and south-eastern coasts of Australia, and even on 

 the north-east shores of the island continent, there are stranded bottles 

 and wreckage from off Cape Horn and from the vicinity of the islands 

 of the Southern Ocean lying north of Kerguelen, such as the Crozets, 

 St. Paul's, and Amsterdam. Roughly speaking, between the parallels 

 of 40° and 60° S. lat. the never-failing westerly winds establish a 

 surface current around the globe, known as the West Wind Drift 

 Current. Of some sixteen bottles referred to in Schott's memoir 

 which performed long passages of from 3500 to 8500 miles in these 

 latitudes, all took an easterly course before the winds of the Roaring 

 Forties. There is not an exception; and the same remark applies 

 to numerous bottles in Australian waters south of the 40th parallel, 

 for the particulars of which we are indebted to Russell, whose " cur- 

 rent papers 55 in the Journal of the Royal Society of New South 

 Wales for 1894 and 1896 are utilised by Schott. 



The average minimum drift-rate up to the dates of the recovery 

 of the bottles is eight to nine miles a day. The quickest rate is 

 concerned with one that covered the distance of about 4500 miles 

 between a locality to the north of Kerguelen and its place of arrival 

 in New Zealand at a speed of at least 10-6 miles a day. If in order 

 to allow for the delay in the recovery we take the average daily rate 

 at ten miles, then a bottle drifting round the globe, so as to clear 

 Cape Horn, would accomplish the circuit of about 12,000 miles in 

 rather over three years. At this speed a bottle starting from off 

 the Horn would reach South-eastern Australia in about two and a 

 third years, a passage of about 8500 miles. Two mentioned by Schott 

 actually accomplished this traverse, the minimum daily rates up 

 to the dates of recovery in South-east Australia being 8 and 9*2 

 miles. One, referred to by Page, even extended its drift around 

 the east coast of Australia to Cape York, performing a passage of 

 some 10,500 miles in nearly three years at a minimum rate of about 

 ten miles a day, one of the longest drifts known. 



But the important point is that during the easterly drift across 

 the Southern Ocean there is a continuous slant to the northward. 

 Drift always decreases its latitude during long passages in the belt 

 of the " brave west winds " ; and its general course from off Cape 

 Horn towards Australia would be about E. by N. and from New 

 Zealand eastward about E. \ N. Thus it is that bottles and wreckage 

 from off the Horn in about lat. 57° S., from the vicinity of the Crozets 

 and northward of Kerguelen in lat. 44°-46° S., and from the seas 

 to the south-west of Cape Leeuwin in lat. 42° S., in all cases cross 

 the 40th parallel before reaching Australia. The same northward 

 deflection is to be noticed in drifts across the Pacific in high latitudes, 

 but the amount is less, the displacement being from two to five 

 degrees of latitude. 



Schott (p. 22) emphasises this northerly slant of the drift in the 

 Southern Ocean. The result is that Fuegian drift reaches the south 

 coasts of Australia and the north extremity of New Zealand, which 

 lie fifteen to twenty degrees further north. Of four bottles cast 

 overboard off Cape Horn, three of which are referred to by Schott 

 and one by Page, one reached South-west Australia in the vicinity 



