APPENDIX 



445 



and in the same locality, about 200 miles off the Amazon estuary, 

 its two associates being afterwards stranded on Trinidad, the mini- 

 mum daily rates recorded being 43-5 and 36-1 miles (U.S. Chart 

 for the N. Atlantic, May 1909). The behaviour of these three bottles 

 is most instructive. Evidently there was considerable delay in 

 their recovery on Trinidad, ?r and very little delay in the case of the 

 one that reached the Virgin Islands. We should probably, therefore, 

 not go far wrong if we assumed that in the last part of its oceanic 

 passage along the coasts of North Brazil and the Guianas the Main 

 Equatorial Current carries bottle-drift to the West Indian region 

 at the average rate of forty miles a day. 



(e) Off the Amazon Estuary and thence to the Florida Coasts. — With 

 reference to the time occupied by drift in the passage from the 

 vicinity of the Amazon estuary to the Florida seas the following 

 data may be employed. The track assigned in both the American 

 and German maps to bottles that arrive on the coasts of 

 Florida from latitudes in the tropical Atlantic south of 10° 

 N. lies across the Caribbean Sea and through the Straits of 

 Yucatan. This is well illustrated by the drift of two bottles that 

 were dropped into the sea on the same day of April within twenty- 

 five miles of each other and about 130 or 140 miles off the coast of 

 French Guiana, the details of which are given in the U.S. North 

 Atlantic chart for May 1909. One was recovered in the Gulf of 

 Honduras 111 days afterwards, the distance of 1920 miles being 

 covered at a minimum rate of 17-3 miles a day (not 27-3 miles as 

 stated in error in the chart). The other was found on the east coast 

 of Florida north of the Straits in lat. 26° 56' N. Up to the date of 

 recovery 182 days had passed and the minimum rate over a distance 

 of 2640 miles is placed at 14-5 miles a day. Very remarkable is 

 it that a third bottle thrown over on the following day from the same 

 ship in lat. 10° N., and about six degrees east of Trinidad was recovered 

 143 days afterwards in the same place on the Florida coast, the 

 estimated minimum rate over a distance of 2400 miles being 16-8 

 miles a day. Since the bottle was recovered thirty-eight days before 

 the other, which was found in the same locality, it is probable that 

 it was picked up with but little delay. 



Another record from this part of the Atlantic, though evidently 

 a belated one, concerns a bottle thrown over from the Prince Eugene 

 in March, about 300 miles north-east of the mouths of the Amazon. 

 It has already been mentioned in Chapter III. It was found on the 

 east coast of Florida in lat. 27° 30' N. 279 days afterwards, and 

 therefore farther north than the two bottles above referred to, 

 and like them it had been carried through the Florida Strait. The 

 distance as determined by the U.S. Hydrographic Office is 3320 

 miles, and the rate about twelve miles a day. From the foregoing 

 data it may be fairly assumed that an average daily rate of seventeen 

 miles between the Amazon coasts and the shores of Florida is not 

 an excessive estimate for bottle-drift. Taking the distance at 3200 

 miles, it would be covered in 188 days or about six months. 



Doubtless the track taken by these bottles across the Caribbean 

 Sea and the Gulf of Mexico was also followed by a bottle, already 



