APPENDIX 



471' 



Occasionally, again, a bottle breaks away altogether from the 

 eddies of the Bermudian seas and reaches the opposite coasts of 

 the Atlantic ; but it starts from the Gulf Stream side of the islands 

 200 miles to the westward, and would represent the track not of 

 Bermudian but of West Indian and American drift. Thus in the 

 American chart for February 1909 the track is given of a bottle 

 that was recovered on the Orkney Islands fourteen months after 

 it had been thrown over about 200 miles W.N.W. of Bermuda, 



Viewing the group as the recipient rather than as the distributor- 

 of drift, it is curious to notice how many localities on the opposite 

 coasts of the North Atlantic would supply it with these materials. 

 Though well outside the tropics, it figures as regards vegetation 

 mainly as an outlier of tropical lands to the south and west. It is 

 in that direction that we must chiefly look for results of effective 

 dispersal by currents. The current that brings it seed-drift from 

 that quarter would derive it from Cuban and Florida seas, as well 

 as from the continental shores brushed by it as far north as Cape 

 Hatteras ; but for the most part the Cuban and Florida drift would 

 be alone effective. The currents that brought bottle-drift from s 

 few hundred miles off Cape Finisterre sweep past the coasts of Morocco 

 and the islands of Madeira and the Canaries, and would doubtless 

 bring seed-drift from those localities, which, however, would be 

 mostly ineffective for the purpose of dispersal, since a passage of 

 one and a half and two years would be involved. Strange but 

 useless gifts might arrive from the shores of Nova Scotia and New- 

 foundland after a circuit of the North Atlantic covering about three 

 years. 



The Bermudas would be practically cut off from South America 

 and from the regions from which the Main Equatorial Current: 

 derives its drift. I have no record of any bottle reaching these; 

 islands from equatorial regions or from the South Atlantic. There> 

 is, however, a possible connection through the Antillean Stream;; 

 but the drift which that current supplies to Bermuda would be 

 the drift it receives at its eastern border from the northern portion 

 of the North Equatorial Current, and not the drift that its main 

 stream at times brings to the Bahamas from the coasts and rivers 

 of the Guianas and Brazil. Bottle-drift from the South American 

 localities just named may, as we have seen in Chapter III., reach 

 the Florida seas ; but I have found no record of its having ever been 

 recovered on the Bermudas. Still, the possibility remains. 



Note 15 (p. 51). 



The circuit of the North Atlantic accomplished by drift. 



It would not be possible in the case of bottle-drift to be absolutely 

 certain that one and the same bottle had accomplished this circuit, 

 since evidence such as is supplied by derelicts of the position at 

 different stages of the passage would not be forthcoming. The 

 chances, however, of its having happened often are very great. 

 Its antecedent possibility is proved over and over again in piece- 



