884 
BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES 
to the east of where it was put out, the other on Tuckernuck Island, between 
Nantucket and Marthas Vineyard, after 46 days. 
The others, from the southern end of this line, seem to have been carried far 
enough out of the sound on the first ebb to escape the next flood back again. The 
two that were picked up at the mouth of Buzzards Bay must have drifted on a 
comparatively direct route, for one was picked up after five and the other after six 
days. Evidently they came within the sweep of the Buzzards Bay tides. The 
bottles that went to New York and New Jersey must have escaped this. The one 
that was picked up at the entrance to Narragansett Bay only five days after it was 
put out evidently followed a route directly westward, making it a fair assumption 
that the three others set afloat close by, which went to New Jersey, also traveled 
via the same route, paralleling the coast. 
Fig. 175. — Assumed drifts of representative bottles recovered from lines H, set out in August, 1924. place of release 
It would be an instructive experiment to put bottles out on this same line early 
on the flood tide, so that they would journey eastward, up the sound at first, not 
out of it, so to determine what net movement results from tides whose velocity (1.7 
to 2.5 knots at strength) is so great that “a certain part of the water, at least, travels 
a distance of one-half or more of the length of Vineyard Sound during a single phase 
of the tide.” (Sumner, Osburn, and Cole, 1913, p. 36.) The earlier current tables 
published by the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey (Coast Pilot, 1912, 
Appendix I) indicate a net westerly drift of the water along the axis of Vineyard 
Sound at a rate of about 2 miles per 24 hours, the easterly movement averaging 
