61 



Jamaica, the Isle of Cuba, and of the neighbour- 

 ing continent*. The current carries thither also 

 barrels of French wine, well preserved, the re- 

 mains of the cargoes of vessels wrecked in the 

 West Indian Seasf. To these examples of the 

 distant migration of the vegetable world, others 

 no less striking may be added. The wreck of an 

 English vessel, the Tilbury, burnt near Jamaica, 

 was found on the coasts of Scotland. On these 

 same coasts various kinds of tortoises are some- 

 times found, that inhabit the waters of the An- 

 tilles. When the western winds are of long du- 

 ration, a current is formed in the high latitudes, 

 which runs directly towards the east-south-east, 

 from the coasts of Greenland and Labrador, as 

 far as the north of Scotland. Wallace relates, 

 that twice, in 1682 and 1684, American savages 

 of the race of the Esquimaux, driven out to sea 

 in their leathern canoes, during a storm, and left 

 to the guidance of the currents, reached the 

 Orcades^. This last example is so much the 

 more worthy of attention, as it proves at the 



* Pennant, Voyage to the Hebrides, 1772, p. 232. Gun- 

 ner's Acta Nidrosiensia, t. ii, p. 310. Sloane, in the Philos. 

 Trans. No. 22*2, p. 398. Linn. Amsen. Acad. vol. ii. p. 477. 



t Necker, View of Nature in the Hebrides, in the Bibl. 

 Brit. vol. xlii, p. 90. 



{ James Wallace, (of Kirkwall) Account of the Islands of 

 Orkney, 1700, p. 60. Fischer, in Pallas, Neue Nordische 

 Beitaerge, B. iii, p. 320. Greenlanders have been seen in the 

 islands of £da and Westram. 



