866 
BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OP FISHERIES 
movement around the shoal part of the bank, drifting northward around its western 
flank and southward past the eastern flank. Drifts into the Gulf of Maine basin, at 
considerable velocities, result from the two stations in the center of the Eastern 
Channel. 
At the time these observations were made the Northern Channel seems to have 
been dominated (as basins generally are in our latitudes) by an anticlockwise drift, 
southwesterly (toward the Gulf of Maine) in its northern side and southeasterly 
(away from the gulf) in its southern side. This latter drift, with the inward current 
in the Eastern Channel, suggests that Browns Bank was then the center of a clock- 
wise eddy. 
Current measurements also were taken in the center of the gulf, near Cashes 
Ledge (lat. 42° 53', long. 68° 54'), on September 1 to 4, 1875, through a period of 58 
hours, from which Harris (1907, pi. 7) has deduced a southerly set of about 4 miles 
per day. This agrees with the clockwise circulation to be expected around Cashes 
Ledge, this station being situated on its southeastern slope. Examination of the 
original data (supplied by the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey), however, makes 
it more likely that the dominant set varied with the wind there during the 
period of observation. The first 48 hours of the set (which apparently covered two 
tidal periods, because extending from “no current” to “no current”) show a result- 
ant toward the S. 26° W. of about 4 miles per 24 hours, as Harris represents it; but 
this period includes 8 hours (in groups of 3, 1, and 4) when no readings were taken, 
but during at least four of which the current almost certainly had an easterly com- 
ponent, judging from the stage of the tide as indicated by the veering of the current. 
The successive hourly directions also proved much more nearly rotary for the sec- 
ond tidal period than for the first, and with wide variation in its velocity while run- 
ning in corresponding directions. It is wisest, therefore, to attempt no deduction of 
the dominant direction of the set from these data. 
SUMMARY 
The current measurements so far taken in the gulf when combined indicate 
the following circulatory movements: In the eastern side of the gulf the tendency is 
northward along Nova Scotia into the Bay of Fundy in its southern side, northward 
toward New Brunswick, and out of the bay along the south side of Grand Manan, 
with a counterflow into the bay via the Grand Manan Channel. 
There is a gap in the observations for the coast section between Grand Manan 
and Cape Elizabeth. Off the latter the general set is southerly, though often de- 
flected or temporarily reversed by the wind. 
Two drifts are indicated in the region of Massachusetts Bay — one anticlockwise 
around its coast line and the other southerly across its mouth and down along 
Cape Cod. The drift is out to the eastward from Nantucket Sound, generally 
southerly and easterly past Nantucket Shoals. The records taken at Nantucket 
Lightship show a veering to the west and northwest around the shoals in summer, 
though not in winter. Two clockwise movements are suggested farther east— one 
around Georges Bank as a whole and a smaller one around its shoalest part. 
