BOTTLED INFORMATION.

There is a mode of bottling up information
until wanted, which occasionally
perplexes those who are not behind the scenes,
and who do not see why and wherefore the
thing is done. It was about half a century
ago that this "bottle department" was
established; we are not without examples of its
previous use, but it then became a definite
system. A captain of a ship tells of his
whereabout; he writes on a piece of paper or
parchment; he encloses this in an empty
bottle; he seals this bottle, and casts it into
the sea; he leaves it to the mercy of the
winds and waves; and he believes that, at
some time and in some place, it will be picked
up, and the contents opened and read.

This is not a mere freak or joke. It has in
it a serious and intelligible purpose.
Navigators are greatly interested in determining
the strength and direction of the currents of
the ocean, and the winds which blow over it.
Now a bottle containing only a slip of paper
will float and travel hither and thither with
a very slight impulse; and if it do not
encounter a rude dashing against a piece of
rock, it may remain intact, we know not how
long, either floating about, or lying peacefully
stranded on a solitary and unvisited
beach. True, if such a bottle were cast forth
on the first of January, near St. Helena, and
were picked up on the thirty-first of December,
near the Isle of Wight, the facts would
not prove that the bottle had taken the direct
or nearest course from the one island to the
other, neither that it had been continuously
travelling during a space of three hundred
and sixty-four days. But, if many bottles, at
many different times, were cast into the sea
near St. Helena, a comparison of the
resultant times and distances might, perhaps,
give an average, which the navigator would
store up among his valuable data. Again, if
a ship be in distress, and the crew or
passengers doubtful whether they will ever again
see home, a few loving words may thus be
entrusted to the merciful waves. At any
rate, a bottle thus filled with what cannot
make any one drunk, unless it be with joy,
is an innocent bottle, and may do more good
than harm.

Thus thought Captain Becher, the editor of
the Nautical Magazine, who, about ten years
ago, determined to collect, so far as he could,
all the records of bottles picked up, with a
view to laying the groundwork for useful
inferences hereafter. He drew and caused
to be engraved, a very curious chart of all the
bottle-voyages, concerning which any information
could be obtained. It comprises a
hundred and nineteen voyages or tracks, each
marked by a straight line from the point
where the bottle was dropped into the sea, to
the point where it was picked up. Of the
bottles' intermediate peregrinations, nothing
is known. It may have travelled by a
circuitous route; but, as the chart-compilers
were in the dark as to that matter, they had
no course left but simply to draw a line from
the point of departure to the point of arrival,
to mark the general direction: leaving it to
after  researches to make clear, if they could,
the actual route which the bottle had
followed.

The chart comprises only the Atlantic, and
only that part of the Atlantic which lies
between the latitude of the Orkneys, and the
latitude of Guinea. Either bottle-papers had
not been started elsewhere, or they had not
been picked up, or information of their having
been picked up had not been forwarded to
London. The Atlantic, especially the portion
between Great Britain and the United States,
is plentifully scratched over with these lines
of route. A large number of bottles thrown
into the sea near the coast of Africa were
picked up on the shores of the various West
Indian Islands; while those thrown into the
sea near the coasts of the United States,
found their way to Europe. This corresponds,
to a certain degree, with the known direction
of the currents in the Atlantic. One bottle
seems to anticipate the Austral-Panama
route; for, it commenced its voyage on the
Atlantic side of the Panama Isthmus, and
landed on the Irish Coast. Another bold
bottle cut across the Atlantic, from the Canary
Islands to Nova Scotia. Three or four,
started by Arctic navigators or whale-fishers
from the entrance to Davis's Strait, voyaged
to the north-west coast of Ireland. One
bottle played rare pranks; it started from
the South Atlantic, jumped across Western
Africa, then across the Straits of Gibraltar,
then through Spain, across the Bay of Biscay,