APPENDIX 



465 



The above list, as already implied, does not exhaust the sources 

 of the bottle-drift stranded on the south-eastern Bahamas. On 

 the islands of the same group, farther to the north-west, have been 

 recovered bottles dropped into the sea off the east side of the Lesser 

 Antilles and off the coasts of the Guianas and of North Brazil, 

 which, as they were borne along in the Antillean Stream, must have 

 passed between the Turks, Caicos, and Inagua Islands, to reach their 

 destinations. 



The subjoined notes refer to the results above given : — 



A. The average distance by Madeira and the Cape Verde Islands 

 route would be about 4200 miles, the greatest daily rate indicated 

 being 7-2 miles. 



B. Recovered after 597 days, giving a minimum daily rate of 8-5 

 miles over a distance of 5100 miles (see Note 20). 



C. D, E, F. Except in two cases only the tracks on the chart are given. 

 In one of them a belated drift of only 3-5 miles a day was indicated. 

 In the other, which is given in Purdy's Columbian Navigator for 

 1839, a bottle from off Madeira was found ten years afterwards 

 on the Turks Islands. 



G. The fastest daily rate up to the time of recovery was 5-S 

 miles. 



H, I. All were stranded during the winter months, a season when 

 the Trade may blow strongly for long spells from the north. The 

 number of bottles thrown over a few hundred miles to the northward 

 and eastward give an excessive idea of the relative frequency of 

 drift from this quarter, since the captains of one or two ships seem 

 to have been especially interested in this point. At this season, 

 also, drift may arrive from the vicinity of the Bermudas. 



J. Recovered after 309 days. It probably accomplished a short 

 circuit of the North Atlantic by being deflected south in the neigh- 

 bourhood of the Azores. Several bottles thrown over at the same 

 time reached the shores of Europe (see p. 49). 



Equally suggestive, as significant of the direction pursued by 

 floating drift in this region, are the indications of bottles dropped 

 overboard in the seas between the south-eastern Bahamas and His- 

 paniola. In the American charts are given the data for forty bottles 

 thrown over between October and May just half-way between the 

 Turks Islands and the coast of Hispaniola in or about 20° 30' N. and 

 71° 30' W., and about forty miles S.S.W. of the Turks Group. They 

 were mostly cast over from the S.S. New York in 1906; but some 

 were thrown over from the S.S. Cherokee in 1905, besides one or 

 two from other vessels. There was evidently a special reason for 

 selecting this locality, which on account of the number of bottles 

 thrown over there, probably some hundreds, if we allow for the non- 

 recoveries, must be nearly un ique in the West Indian region. Doubt- 

 less it was concerned with the investigation of the Antillean Stream, 

 which is the current that traverses this region on its way northward 

 and westward towards the Florida Strait. The results of these 

 experiments are now given. 



H H 



