APPENDIX 



483 



in the Nautical Magazine for 1852 is 7° 7' S. and 8° 6' W., which is 

 quite inconsistent with the statement associated that the bottle 

 was cast over two and a half leagues north-east of Ascension. It 

 is unfortunate that, as with Sabine's remarkable case of drift, there 

 is here the suspicion of a doubt, which in neither case, however, 

 affects the possibility of the passage, though in the one it is concerned 

 with the identity of the casks and in the other with the dates assigned 

 for the start and recovery of the bottle. 



Note 27 (p. 38). 

 Bottle-drift on the Canary Islands. 



From what has been said in Chapters II. and III. it will be gathered 

 that the Canary Group lies in the track of that portion of the seed- 

 drift of the Gulf Stream which, after passing north of the Azores 

 and approaching the European sea-border, is deflected south in the 

 Portuguese or North African Current. Losing much of its materials 

 on the shores of South-western Europe and on the coast of Morocco, 

 the bulk of the residue traverses the Canaries, and continuing south 

 turns westward near the latitude of the Cape Verde Group, finally 

 reaching the West Indian region in the North Equatorial Current. 

 All the records supplied by bottles and floats would therefore be 

 expected to come from the north and north-west. The data to be 

 now given indicate that this is actually the case, there being no 

 records from the south. (The materials are supplied from the Ameri- 

 can charts, the Prince of Monaco's papers, Dr. Schott's monograph, 

 the Nautical Magazine, etc.) 



Of the twenty-eight bottle-drift records at my disposal, one came 

 from the vicinity of Cape Sable (Nova Scotia), sixteen from the 

 region between the Azores and the Banks of Newfoundland, one 

 from off Cape Farewell (Greenland), and ten from the seas north of 

 the Canaries, between the meridians of 13° and 18° W., and at dis- 

 tances ranging from 500 to 1200 miles north of the group (37°-49° N). 

 Though there is no record of a bottle or float from West Indian 

 waters, several of the floats dropped over by the Prince of Monaco 

 between the Azores and the Banks of Newfoundland must have 

 begun their drifting passage in the middle of the track pursued by 

 West Indian seeds across the North Atlantic ; and doubtless instances 

 of stranding on the Canaries would have been forthcoming with 

 more extensive data at one's disposal. 



The daily rate of the drift from the North-west Atlantic to these 

 islands is evidently small. Of 996 floats thrown over in 1887 by 

 the Prince of Monaco between the Azores and the Great Bank of 

 Newfoundland (including sixty-five from positions to the north of 

 the Azores), 142 were recovered, and of these fourteen (10 per cent.) 

 were found on the Canary Islands. The mean daily drift of the 

 five recovered in the shortest time is placed by him at 5*32 miles. 

 If we place the average distance traversed at about 2000 miles, 

 about a year (376 days) would be covered in the passage. A period 

 of only six months between the times of the start and recovery is 



