890 
BULLETIN OF THE BUBEAU OF FISHERIES 
periodic variation, with the dominant movement following around the coast line of 
the bay in some summers and passing it as a sort of back water at other times. It 
was in the hope of throwing further light on this secular alternation, especially in its 
bearing on the involuntary migrations of fish eggs and larva, that series I and K 
were set out in the bay in February and May, 1925, and series L, M, and N in April, 
1926 (p. 877). 
Twenty-three (26 per cent) of the February series of 90 bottles have been recov- 
ered. Recoveries from bottles set out off the Plymouth shore were distributed as 
follows: One (No. 74) from Stellwagen Bank, 28 milesoff Gloucester; one froman equal 
distance out in the basin of the gulf (fig. 177); two from Nantucket; one from the Nova 
Scotian shore of the Bay of Fundy; 70 and one, put out close to the tip of Cape Cod 
(No. 22), went to Fire Island, New York. 
These drifts, combined, show a definite surface set out of the southern side of 
the bay, dividing off Cape Cod, where some bottles took the southern route down 
past Nantucket, and so westward (which so many bottles from the Cape Cod line 
(line B) followed in July, 1922), while one, at least, was caught up in the southern 
side of the Gulf of Maine eddy, reproducing the drifts of bottles from the Cape Ann 
line of 1923 (p. 887). 
The bottles set out in the eastern side of Cape Cod Bay followed a surprisingly 
definite set eastward and toward Provincetown, no less than 16 out of 21 stranding 
in that harbor or near by (all of them to the east and most of them well to the north 
of where they were set adrift) after intervals of 5 to 17 days (usually 5 or 6). Drifts 
of this sort suggest an anticlockwise movement of the surface water around Cape 
Cod Bay, with a subsidiary eddy of the same sort in Provincetown Harbor, which 
finally caught them up as they set northward along the inner shore of the cape. 
Ten bottles set out in Ipswich Bay on April 7 (series J) give definite evidence 
of a southerly set around Cape Ann and into Massachusetts Bay, one of them having 
been found at Brant Rock, a few miles north of Plymouth, and two near Race Point, 
at the tip of Cape Cod, after intervals of 14 to 22 days. A fourth, picked up at 
Cutler, Me., at the western entrance to the Grand Manan Channel after 106 days, 
apparently had followed the southern side of the Gulf of Maine eddy, veering south- 
east, east, and northeast, and so paralleling the drift of bottles set out off Cape Ann 
in 1923 (line F; p. 887) and at about the same daily rate. A rather definite anti- 
clockwise drift around the Massachusetts Bay region is thus indicated for winter 
and early spring by the combined drifts of the February and April series, its southern 
edge involving Cape Cod Bay but with the water farther north setting more to the 
eastward and so out past Cape Cod. 
This same type of circulation is still more clearly reflected by the drifts of 40 
bottles put out in Massachusetts Bay on the 20th to the 22d of that May (series K), 
drifts so easily interpreted as to demand rather detailed study. Eighteen of these 
were recovered — the largest percentage (45) for any series yet set out in the Gulf of 
Maine. 
Following around the bay from north to south we find one or two bottles set 
out off Manchester 71 drifting to Marblehead and Nahant, while one bottle set 
70 Freeport, Digby County. 
71 About 3 miles west of Gloucester. 
