300 PLANTS, SEEDS, AND CURRENTS 



in the middle of the South Pacific in about lat 46° S. and long. 135° W., 

 was picked up on Chiloe (Schott, p. 22, Map 6, No. 38). Materials 

 from the islands south of New Zealand, such as Auckland and Mac- 

 quarie Islands, from Kerguelen and the islands south of it, and 

 from perhaps the distant South Orkney and South Shetland Islands 

 and the neighbouring shores of Antarctica, would be beached further 

 south on the coasts of Fuegia and on the islands reaching north 

 from Cape Pillar to the 50th parallel. A very interesting drift- 

 record was published in the London Times for April 17, 1912. A 

 bottle thrown over by Captain Wilkes of the Tyser Line nearly a 

 thousand miles east of Kerguelen (lat. 51° 38' S. and long. 96° 15' E.) 

 on November 17, 1908, was recovered about three years afterwards 

 by Maurice Deffarges on the coast of South Chile in lat. 49° 42' S. 

 and long. 74° 25' W. 



Doubtless drift materials brought from high southern latitudes 

 by the " west wind drift current " to these shores of South America 

 would sometimes be carried north by the Humboldt or Peruvian 

 Current and distributed along the Pacific coasts. It is also possible 

 that such drift might ultimately be carried past the Galapagos 

 Islands into the stream of the South Equatorial Current and in this 

 manner be returned to the north-east coasts of Australia. But 

 since at least six years would be taken up in the double traverse 

 from New Zealand to South America and back to Australia, it is 

 for several reasons doubtful whether as far as seeds are concerned 

 it would be of any effective value. 



One must not ignore the possibility of seed-drift being carried 

 round the Horn from the west to the east side of Tierra del Fuego. 

 Not all of that part of the great " west wind drift current " which 

 strikes the west coast of South America south of the 37th parallel 

 is deflected north in the Peruvian Current. It gives rise south of 

 the 50th parallel to a small stream that doubling Cape Horn joins 

 the Antarctic Current, which proceeding northward meets the 

 Brazilian Current off the estuary of the Plate. Schott lays down 

 the track in Map 6 of a bottle which, after being dropped overboard 

 off the west coast of Fuegia in about lat. 54° S. was recovered in 

 the Falkland Islands (see p. 22 of his text). 



The probability of tropical South America supplying tropical 

 North-east Australia with littoral plants through the agency of 

 the South Equatorial Current will be subsequently discussed. On 

 its eastern tropical coasts South America would receive drift from 

 tropical West Africa through the Main Equatorial Current, as ex- 

 plained in Chapter III. ; whilst the South Atlantic Connecting Current 

 would carry materials from its extra-tropical eastern shores to South 

 Africa. The fact that drift can double the Horn in the Antarctic 

 Current and be transferred from the west coasts of Fuegia to the 

 eastern side of the continent is noticed in the same chapter. But 

 it is as a distributor of drift to Southern Australia, Northern New 

 Zealand, the islands to the north of Kerguelen, and occasionally 

 to South Africa that Fuegia plays the most important role. 



Africa and its Current-Connections. — The last of these 

 southern continental land-masses to be here dealt with is Africa. 



