828 
BULLETIN OF THE BUKEAU OF FISHERIES 
southern extension of the cold polar water.” 27 Observers who have actually studied 
oceanographic conditions first hand in the Grand Banks region are unanimous to this 
effect. 
The evidence of temperature and salinity on which this general thesis rests is 
set forth in detail in the successive reports of the patrol (see also Bjerkan, 1919; 
Le Danois, 1924, p. 40, and 1924a, p. 46) and need not be repeated here. I need only 
point out that any branch of the Labrador Current that might flow southward from 
the banks would not only be betrayed by its temperature and salinity (p. 829) but 
it would doubtless carry bergs with it in greater or less number from time to time. 
Actually, however, not a single berg (except small ones drifting out from the Gulf 
of St. Lawrence) was reported west of longitude 55° during the period from 1911 to 
1924, very few west of longitude 52°, whereas some hundreds came drifting down 
along the east slope of the Grand Banks during that period (see E. H. Smith, 1924, 
chart P, showing distribution of ice bergs from 1911 to 1923). 
The results of the drift-bottle experiments carried out in eastern Canadian waters 
within the past few years by the Biological Board of Canada have not yet been 
published in detail. However, Dr. A. G. Huntsman kindly supplies the informa- 
tion that they give no more suggestion of a definite stream from the Grand Banks 
toward Nova Scotia than do the temperatures or ice drifts just discussed . 28 
In short, no actual evidence of such a current is forthcoming from recent inves- 
tigations, but the reverse. I have no hesitation, therefore, in definitely asserting 
that the Labrador Current does not reach, much less skirt, the coast of North Amer- 
ica, from Nova Scotia southward, as a regular event, corroborating Jenkins’s (1921, 
p. 166) statement that it does not reach the coast of the United States. Conse- 
quently this is not the direct source of the cold current that reaches the Gulf of 
Maine from the east. If overflows of the Labrador Current do take place in this 
direction they are of such rare occurrence that no event of this sort has yet 
come under direct scientific observation. 
As Huntsman (1924, p. 278) points out, a certain amount of the water flowing 
down from the Arctic may move westward and southwestward along the slope of 
the continent as a constituent of the slope water (p. 842), so much warmed, however, 
en route, by mixture with tropic water that if it reaches the Gulf of Maine at all it 
does so as a warming and not as a cooling agent, and on bottom, not at the sur- 
face. Labrador Current water in small amount may also reach the gulf indirectly 
via the Gulf of St. Lawrence route, shortly to be discussed; but if so, its distinguish- 
ing characters as an Arctic current are lost, and it becomes one of the constituents 
of a coastal current. 
The physical characters of the cold band of water that hugs the outer coast of 
Nova Scotia also forbid the idea that it draws direct from the Labrador Current. 
According to the observations by the Scotia (Matthews, 1914), the records of the 
Canadian Fisheries Expedition of 1915 (Bjerkan, 1919), and the much more exten- 
sive data that have been accumulated during the years of the Ice Patrol, the 
21 The reader is referred to Smith’s chart (1924a, sketch 10, p. 150) for the normal distribution of the Arctic water around the 
banks in the spring and early summer; also to his general scheme of circulation in the vicinity of the tail (Smith, 1924a, p. 135) . 
18 Huntsman’s chart (1924, fig. 32) showing the complexity of the circulation between Nova Scotia and Newfoundland 
includes the most outstanding results of these experiments. 
