880 
BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES 
4 months. The line may be divided into three sections, according to the localities 
of recovery: First, an inner section, from Cape Cod across the mouth of Nantucket 
Sound and skirting the easterly edge of Nantucket Shoals; second, a middle section, 
from the shoals out nearly to the edge of the continent; and third, the outer end of 
the line to the seaward of the continental edge. 
Ten bottles out of the 250 set out along the inner section were picked up to the 
eastward, three of them on the Nova Scotian shore of the Bay of Fundy, one on the 
northeastern part of Georges Bank, and five (after short drifts) in the south channel 
and along the northwestern side of Georges Bank (fig. 174). 68 This last group of 
recoveries is especially instructive as evidence that the surface water to the south 
and southeast of Cape Cod was setting in a southeasterly direction at the time. 
Bottle No. 362, picked up 40 miles to the southeast of the place of its release, after 
5 days’ drift, and Nos. 396 and 405, found 30 miles away after 8 days, can hardly 
have diverged from a direct line except to follow the spiral tracks induced by the 
veering tidal currents of this region, unless the dominant set was more rapid at the 
time than other experiences in the gulf would suggest. 67 A southeasterly set is also 
indicated in this general region by the current measurements carried out by the United 
States Coast and Geodetic Survey (p. 864). 
The uniformity of these southeasterly drifts makes it likely that the bottles that 
went from the inner end of line B to the eastern end of Georges Bank and to Nova 
Scotia also drifted in a southeasterly direction at first, veering to the eastward — i. e., 
anticlockwise. 
It seems that this inner section of line B followed the boundary of demarkation 
between this southeasterly set and another drift directed more to the southward from 
the mouth of Nantucket Sound, veering westward past Nantucket Shoals, because 
20 bottles from this section were picked up along the southern coast of New England. 
The fact that current measurements show a general southeasterly set over Nantucket 
Shoals and a summer set to the west and northwest at the lightship a few miles farther 
south, makes it more likely that these bottles rounded the shoals than that they 
crossed the latter. 
It is a question of considerable interest whether 11 bottles, spaced across the 
eastern entrance to Nantucket Sound, which were picked up along the south shores 
of Nantucket, Marthas Vineyard, and of New England between Buzzards Bay and 
and Block Island, drifted directly westward through Nantucket and Vineyard Sounds 
or whether they also traveled southward around Nantucket Island and Shoals. Of 
course, a positive answer can not be given; but it seems hardly conceivable that some 
of them would not have been picked up afloat in the sounds or stranded along shore 
there if they had gone through, because these beaches are thronged with vacationists. 
Actually, however, not one of the bottles from line B was found along the northern 
coast of the sounds, and only one of them on the northern shore of Nantucket, 159 
days after it was set afloat. One, however, after 30 days afloat, was found 1 mile 
inside Gay Head at the western end of Marthas Vineyard, where many species of 
tropical fishes have been recorded in summer. Thus, it seems almost certain that 
ee One bottle from this section went to France. 
61 Bottle No. 510 was reported on the northwest slope of Georges Bank, 50 miles from where it was set out, within 3 days. 
This ostensible drift is so rapid, however, that some error in the reported locality seems probable. 
