APPENDIX 



481 



tenella. In this species, as we learn from Pax and Knuth, the fila- 

 ments are woolly along most of their length, and they unite to form 

 a free tube one-third of their length. In A. filiformis the filaments 

 are only woolly below their middle, and their cohesion concerns 

 but a fourth or fifth of their length. 



Should any botanist in South Brazil be kind enough to send me 

 specimens of Anagallis filiformis both in flower and in mature seed, 

 I could try the effect of growing the plant under the conditions of 

 an English peat-bog. 



Note 25 (p. 76). 



Sabine's record of the drifting of casks of palm oil from the 

 Gulf of Guinea to Hammer f est. 



Sir Edward Sabine in one of the notes appended to his English 

 edition of Humboldt's Kosmos (Vol. I., note 373, p. 454, 1846) gives 

 particulars of a remarkable case of drift from the Gulf of Guinea to 

 the vicinity of the North Cape, which naturally attracted the attention 

 of Gumprecht, Fogh, Vibe, and others who have written on the 

 subject. As evidence that portions of the cargoes of vessels wrecked 

 on the coast of West Africa may reach Norway after making a double 

 traverse of the Atlantic in the Main Equatorial Current to the West 

 Indies and in the Gulf Stream to Europe, Sabine writes as follows : 

 " Such an instance occurred when the Editor was at Hammerfest, 

 near the North Cape of Europe, in 1823; casks of palm oil were 

 thrown on shore belonging to a vessel which had been wrecked at 

 Cape Lopez, on the African coast, near the Equator, under circum- 

 stances which made her loss the subject of discussion when the 

 Editor was in that quarter of the globe, the year preceding his 

 visit to Hammerfest." The matter is also mentioned by Lady 

 Sabine in her translation of Humboldt's Ansichten der Natur (Vol. I., 

 p. 161, 1849). 



I have not found any fuller details of this wonderful drift, which 

 is properly characterised by Gumprecht as the most interesting 

 recorded fact, and by Fogh as sufficiently marvellous. These casks 

 would have taken the course by the West Indies indicated by Sabine, 

 and the only question arising in this respect is whether they reached the 

 starting-place of the Gulf Stream in the Florida seas by way of the 

 Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, or in the Antillean Current 

 skirting the northern and eastern shores of the Lesser Antilles. 

 From the evidence given in Chapter III. the former course is most 

 probable. The circumstance that not a single cask only but " casks " 

 are stated to have been washed ashore at the same place, and appar- 

 ently about the same time, after a drifting passage of from 10,000 

 to 11,000 miles, discloses the first point for criticism. For reasons 

 given in Chapter III. it is highly improbable that casks could keep 

 together during a double traverse of the ocean, for which a period 

 of at least two years would be needed. 



According to the tables given in Chapter III. the time occupied 

 would be about twenty-six months by the Caribbean Sea route and 

 about twenty-four months by the Antillean Stream route. Com- 

 1 1 



