466 



APPENDIX 



^Places of recovery of forty bottles cast overboard about half-way 

 between the Turks Islands and the adjacent coast of Hispaniola. 



A. North coast of Cuba 29 bottles 



B. Middle and north-west Bahamas . . . 7 „ 



C. Jamaica and the Cayman Islands . . 2 ,, 



D. Yucatan 1 „ 



TL Ireland 1 „ 



40 



A. Most of them were stranded on the north-east coasts of Cuba, 

 but two or three were carried farther and thrown ashore on the Cuban 

 side of the Florida Straits. The average daily drift rate indicated 

 was not over eight or nine miles. 



B. The average drift was five or six miles a day. 



D. Stranded on or near Cozumel Island : daily drift 9-6 miles. 



E. Recovered on the coast of County Mayo 337 days afterwards, 

 giving a daily drift rate over 4140 miles of 12-3 miles (see Note 20). 



Note 14 (p. 49-54). 

 The bottle-drift of the Bermudas. 



(Materials mainly supplied by the American charts, but also by the papers of 

 X)r. Schott and the Prince of Monaco.) 



As regards its relation to the circulatory system of currents in 

 the North Atlantic, Bermuda may be viewed as situated near the 

 inner end of an eccentric spiral, of which the outer end may be 

 considered as represented by the Gulf Stream, as it rushes through 

 the Florida Strait, and the terminal portion as represented by 

 the Antillean Stream curving northward and eastward from the 

 region dividing it from the Bahamas. On the face of things, there- 

 fore, we should expect that these islands would receive much and 

 impart but little. 



I have at my disposal the records of about forty bottles, recovered 

 on these islands, which ought to supply sufficient materials for a 

 preliminary inquiry into the subject; but it will be necessary to 

 make at first a brief reference to the implications involved in such 

 an investigation. As regards the Bermudian fauna and flora opinion 

 seems to fluctuate between two schools of thought : the older school 

 typified in the views of Wallace, Hemsley, and others, who consider 

 that the islands have been stocked through the agencies of birds and 

 currents, and the newer school typified in the views of Dr. Scharff 

 and others, who see in the Bermudian indigenous plants and animals 

 the remains of an ancient fauna and flora which this region received 

 when joined to the North American continent ( Scharff' s Distribution 

 and Origin of Life in America, pp. 183-95). 



As far as the starting-places indicate, bottle-drift may reach the 

 Bermudas from all points of the compass. Bottles have arrived there 



