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APPENDIX 



islands to the North Atlantic currents. Whilst they may receive 

 drift from all round this ocean, they do not figure often as distributors 

 of drift to distant regions. The records of bottle-drift at my disposal 

 for the North Atlantic number some hundreds; but there is only 

 one record of any distant region having received drift from the 

 vicinity of the Bermudas. They give nothing to the adjacent 

 coasts of America only a few hundred miles away. Bottles thrown 

 into the sea within a day's steaming from their shores usually find 

 their way back to the islands sooner or later, even if years elapse. 

 I have the records of seven bottles dropped in the seas around 

 Bermuda, to the north, south-east, south-west, west, and north-west, 

 at distances ranging between 200 and 350 miles. Five out of them 

 were recovered on the islands ; but only in one case is a rapid passage 

 indicated; and here a bottle was recovered twenty-five days after 

 it had been dropped overboard about 300 miles to the south-east 

 of the group. Of the other four, one from 240 miles to the north 

 was found seven months afterwards ; another from 300 miles W.N.W. 

 was picked up also after seven months; another from 350 miles to 

 the west was recovered after nearly six months; and the last from 

 200 miles to the south-west was not found on the islands until two 

 years had passed. It does not, therefore, seem easy for drift to 

 leave the Bermudas, since at most if it obtained an offing it would 

 be caught in the baffling play of the currents around the islands and 

 would be returned after an interval perhaps of months or years. 

 The behaviour of bottle-drift in Bermudian waters was evidently 

 a source of difficulty with Schott, who remarks (p. 13) on the numerous 

 examples from this region concerning which it is scarcely possible 

 to determine their tracks. 



Yet under certain conditions it might be possible for the Bermudas 

 to establish a connection with the Bahamas. But apparently it 

 would be only in the winter months, when the North-east Trade 

 blows freshest and blows home in these seas, that such a connection 

 would be practicable — a matter mentioned in the treatment of the 

 bottle-drift of the Turks Islands in Note 13. Schott (p. 13) gives 

 an instance of a bottle, which, dropped over about 150 miles S.S.W. 

 of Bermuda, early in February, was picked up on the Turks Islands, 

 at the extremity of the Bahamas, forty-nine days later. He quotes 

 the ship's log to the effect that at the time of the start the conditions 

 of wind and current were unfavourable for any drifting passage to the 

 Turks Islands ; but with this exception we know nothing of the actual 

 conditions experienced by the bottle in this remarkable drift. The 

 possibility, however, of the passage of drift from Bermudian seas to the 

 Bahamas is illustrated in the preceding note on the Turks Islands. 

 It is there shown that many bottles reach the south-east Bahamas 

 during the winter months from the northward and eastward, the 

 longest drift being accomplished by bottles from within 300 miles 

 of Bermuda. Here I may mention the tracks of five others, referred 

 to in the American charts for the winter months from November 

 to March, where the bottles reached San Domingo and the central 

 and north-west Bahamas from about half-way between Bermuda 

 and the Bahamas. 



