APPENDIX 



469 



mum rate of 7-8 miles a day. In the same charts, but for December 

 1908, there is a track of a belated bottle which reached Bermuda 

 from a position about 600 miles further west on the 22nd parallel. 

 In both these cases allowance is made for the northward curve of 

 the Antillean Stream towards Bermuda, which the bottles approach 

 from the south-west. The same plan is followed by Schott in laying 

 down the tracks of bottles reaching Bermuda after traversing the 

 Atlantic in the North Equatorial Current, though he gives the 

 Antillean curve a greater sweep and makes them approach the 

 islands from the west. According to this chart one such bottle 

 which was thrown into the sea about the 28th parallel and about 

 800 miles west of the Canaries was picked up at sea nearly 200 miles 

 N.E. of Bermuda. 



But two bottles have been stranded on these islands which were 

 cast into the sea in the eastern Atlantic only 400 or 450 miles north- 

 west of Cape Finisterre. On their way south in the Portuguese 

 or North African Current they would pass near Madeira and the 

 Canary Islands before coming within the influence of the North 

 Equatorial Current, and the whole passage of about 4300 miles 

 would probably occupy about two years. No details are given 

 either by Dr. Schott or by the Prince of Monaco, from whose pages 

 these two records are taken ; but from the data for similar traverses 

 given in Chapter III. we should probably be not far wrong, if, after 

 allowing for the delay in reaching and leaving the North Equatorial 

 Current, we placed it at about six miles a day. In Dr. Schott' s 

 example we can determine the approximate position of the starting- 

 place (46° N. 19° W.) from his map; but in that of the Prince of 

 Monaco we can only say that it was one of a large number of floats 

 that were dropped over in 1886 along the 18th meridian of west 

 longitude and between the parallels of 42° 30' and 50° N. 



Still more interesting are the records of three floats thrown over 

 in the Prince of Monaco's observations of 1887 between the Azores 

 and the Great Bank of Newfoundland, as well as to the north of 

 that group. They form 2 per cent, of the recoveries, and taking 

 the Prince's general estimate of such drifts at 6-4 miles a day, the 

 passage of about 5000 miles implied would occupy about twenty-six 

 months, and would almost involve the circuit of the North Atlantic 

 by way of the Portuguese and North Equatorial Currents. An 

 approach yet nearer to the completion of this circuit is concerned 

 with a bottle thrown over about 130 miles to the south-east of Cape 

 Sable (Nova Scotia) and recovered in Bermuda 1602 days afterwards. 

 In the American chart (Dec. 1908) the passage is computed at 

 5880 miles, which gives a minimum rate of only 3-7 miles a day, and 

 the compiler characterises it as " almost completing the circuit 

 of the ocean." It is noteworthy that although this bottle was 

 cast over about 580 miles north of Bermuda, its passage to those 

 islands involved a distance tenfold in amount. This well illustrates 

 the peculiar position of Bermuda with regard to the currents of the 

 North Atlantic. It is in the track of none of them, yet at the end 

 of all of them. 



This brings one to notice another feature in the relation of these 



