through a jutting-out portion of France near
Brest, and landed at Jersey. The truth is,
that a straight line drawn from the place of
immersion to the place of finding, marks out
this route; and such a line is the only one
which could be employed on the chart. It is
evident that the bottle travelled first towards
the north-west, and then towards the north-east,
to get round the African and European
coasts; very likely, it approached near the
American coast in the course of its trip.

The chart affords no information respecting
the lapse of time during which the bottles
were on their respective voyages; but an
accompanying table gives all that can be
ascertained thereupon. In this table are inserted
eight items of information concerning each
bottle and its contents—the number which
it bears on the chart; the name of the sender;
the date when it was launched into the sea;
the latitude of the place; the longitude; the
place where it was found; the date when it
was found; and the interval in days. One
of these travellers had been out at sea
nearly sixteen years; this roving bottle was
immersed in eighteen hundred and twenty-six,
about midway across the Atlantic,
and was picked up in eighteen hundred
and forty-two on the French coast near
Brest; it may, for aught we know, have
been lying there unnoticed fifteen years out
of the sixteen, for there are obviously no
means of determining the time of its arrival
on a coast, unless some watcher happens
to be there at the moment. Another bottle had
been absent fourteen years; three others, ten
years each; the majority were under a year;
the shortest interval between the throwing
out and the picking up of a bottle, was five
days. In this last-named instance, the
Racehorse threw out a bottle on the seventeenth
of April, in the Caribbean Sea; and by the
twenty-second of the same month, the bottle
had made a nice little voyage of about three
degrees of longitude in a westerly direction.

The bottle-papers often contain such notes
as the following:—"I write this letter in
order that I may find out the current; let
me know if ever you receive it. It is a fine
day for the time of the year, but we have a
foul wind;" together with such entries, as to
names and positions and dates, as will serve
to indicate the starting point of the bottle's
voyage. Captain Marshall, who launched a
bottle off the coast of Spain, determined to
leave no chance untried to get it safely
forwarded by the finder; so he wrote in English,
"Whoever picks up this paper, is requested
to publish it in the first newspaper, British
or foreign, in order to show the course of the
currents;" in French, ''Ayes la boné, de
publier ceci dans les journaux Français ou
Anglais;" and in Spanish, "Tenga V. M. la
bondad de publicar este papel en las Gacetas
Españolas, Inglesas, o Americanas." The
English request sufficed; for the bottle was
picked up near Dover about nine weeks
afterwards. One of the most remarkable
bottle-voyages occurred in eighteen hundred and
forty-two; a ship left Thurso for Canada;
and when about fifteen hundred miles out, a
bottle was launched. This bottle was picked
up on the Scottish coast, within two miles of
the very port whence the vessel had started
about five months before.

The bottle-writers occasionally mingle
good-humour with good intentions, in their
documents. Thus, a bottle was picked up,
containing a paper denoting that it had been
cast into the sea from the brig Flora, on July
the twenty-ninth, eighteen hundred and forty.
It ran thus:

      "There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
        Rough-hew them as we may.

And this is to inform the mighty world, that
the said brig is this day in latitude 43° 55?
north, and longitude 18° 4? west, all well.
Therefore you, the lucky finder of this enclosure,
in whatever part of the globe it may be,
are requested to send it under cover, addressed
to the Editor of the Nautical Magazine, for
the benefit of navigation, in some small degree
towards ascertaining the currents of the
ocean. We left Poole on the nineteenth
instant, bound to Carboneur, in Newfoundland,
and, until these past two days, have had
very rough weather. The passengers have
just had their morning lunch, with a glass of
brown stout, and intend drinking success to
the above magazine, and hope they may soon
succeed in sending forth to seamen a full
and succinct theory of the cause of winds,
formed on accurate information from
experienced navigators. Long live our beloved
Queen, and always in the hearts of her
devoted subjects!" The bottle was picked up
on the coast of Cuba, about twenty months
afterwards.

The bottle-chart in the Nautical Magazine
attracted much attention among sea-faring
men. Sir John Ross pointed out how much
caution is required before inferences can
safely be drawn concerning ocean currents
from the apparent voyages of these itinerant
bottles. He insisted on the fact that a light
floating bottle is very decidedly affected by
the wind, let the current be flowing in what
direction it may. To try this, he shaped a
flat piece of wood exactly the length and
diameter of a bottle; this being loaded with
lead, so that the neck part only was visible
when immersed, was thrown overboard from
the Actæon; a sealed bottle was thrown
overboard at the same time; a gale of
westerly wind was blowing; and it was
observed that the bottle was drifted along by
this wind, while the immersed wood of the
same dimensions remained comparatively
stationary. On another occasion he filled a bottle
with pitch, to such an extent as to enable it to
swim upright with only the neck above water;
when this and an empty bottle were thrown
into the sea, the latter separated to leeward of