APPENDIX 



485 



north of the large islands of the Western Azores. With reference 

 to bottles arriving from European latitudes to the north of Madeira, 

 Schott gives a record (No. 24, map 2) and the American charts 

 give another (March 1909, No. 98). Here the bottles reached the 

 island after being cast over 300 to 360 miles N.N.E. The average 

 daily rate for this part of the Atlantic would be about five miles. 

 It is highly probable that West Indian drift after traversing the 

 Atlantic in the Gulf Stream track is at times diverted to Madeira ; 

 but the records of bottle-drift at my disposal are too scanty to afford 

 a direct indication of this fact. 



Note 29 (p. 38). 

 Sargasso or Gulf weed in Azorean beach-drift. 



The Sargasso weed is only represented by scattered fragments 

 more or less incrusted with polyzoa. Gulf weed seems to be rarely 

 carried eastward of the group except in this condition. Captain 

 Ostboe of the fruit-steamer Fix, who had accomplished about eighty 

 voyages between London and Hamburg and the Azores, told the 

 writer that he had never seen living patches of Sargasso, such as 

 are met with a few hundred miles to the south-west of the islands. 

 Authorities vary somewhat in placing the north-east limit of the 

 Sargasso Sea. All, however, place it to the southward and west- 

 ward of the group, and if we regard the nearest approach as 250 

 or 300 miles south-west of Flores we shall probably be near the 

 limit. It is possible that during south-west gales the living weed 

 may reach the islands, but I found no fragment that did not indicate 

 a prolonged flotation of months in the dead state. The south-east 

 trend of the currents would under ordinary circumstances only 

 permit its approach from the north-west far beyond the area where 

 the living weed is found. 



It would, indeed, appear probable that the fragments of dead 

 Sargasso which reach the Azores have accompanied the drifting 

 West Indian seeds in their circuitous passage from the Florida seas 

 past Cape Hatteras, as described in Chapter III. Sargasso weed 

 seems to possess a fugitive vitality outside its usual waters. 

 Rennell in his work on the Currents of the Atlantic Ocean (p. 183) 

 refers to the observations of Lieutenant Evans, who contrasts the 

 great masses of living weed that were met with in the Gulf of Mexico 

 with the old brown patches of the weed covered with " barnacles " 

 observed in the Florida Stream. 



Walker in his book on the Azores (p. 47) speaks of quantities of 

 Sargasso weed being washed ashore at certain seasons of the year 

 on Graciosa, the islanders employing it for fertilising the land. It 

 is likely that this is not the true Sargasso, but another weed altogether. 

 The people of Magdalena at the west end of Pico, give the name, 

 as the present writer ascertained, to quite another sea-weed that 

 was washed up in abundance during the heavy north-west gales 

 that prevailed during his sojourn there in March. Like the Graciosa 

 men they use it for enriching the soil. They are familiar with the 



