the former at the rate of a quarter of a mile
per hour. When Sir John went on his Arctic
voyage in eighteen hundred and eighteen, he
threw overboard twenty-five copper cylinders
in Davis's Straits; they were of just such
weight as to show an inch or two above
water at one end; but it was not known that
any of these had reached the British coasts in
the succeeding fifteen years—a fact which
seemed to him to invalidate certain reasonings
respecting currents in the northern part of
the Atlantic.

Commander Fishbourne, well known in our
coast surveys, combated some of the views of
Sir John Ross, and insisted on the great maritime
value of the  bottle-paper system, under
due caution against hasty generalisation. He
at the same time suggested that it might be a
good plan to employ white bottles, the glass
being rendered opaquely white by oxide of
arsenic. He thinks that the bottle might be
rendered visible enough to be seen from the
deck of a ship, and that, when picked up, the
contents might be opened and registered,
additional information introduced, and the bottle
re-launched. This might be a very valuable
adjunct to the system.

Two canisters thrown into the sea by
Sir James Clark Ross, while on board the
Erebus, in his voyage to the Antarctic seas in
eighteen hundred and forty-three, were picked
up, some months afterwards, one on the coast
of Ireland, and the other out at sea off
Leghorn. A third made more than half a
circumnavigation of the globe in a high southern
latitude, before it found its resting-place on
the shores of Australia. Judging from the
narratives of our sea-captains, the Pacific
would be a capital theatre for the bottle
experiment. It presents such a vast expanse of
water, and the interspersed islands are mostly
so small, that a bottle-voyage of five or six
thousand miles might easily be made.

The bottle-papers have given us more
information concerning the progress of the
many recent Arctic expeditions than would
be supposed by persons who have only glanced
cursorily at the matter. Captain Bird threw
overboard a cask containing papers, when on
board the Investigator in eighteen hundred
and forty-eight. It was picked up by the
Prince of Wales, Hull whaler, and afforded to
the Admiralty evidence of the position of the
Enterprise and Investigator on a particular
day, From the same ship, but when under the
command of Captain M'Clure (who has since
made himself famous by the discovery of the
north-west passage), a bottle .was thrown
out while she was voyaging down the Atlantic
towards the Behring's Strait route, in February
eighteen hundred and fifty. The bottle floated
three thousand six hundred miles, in two
hundred and six days, and was picked up on the
coast of Honduras. By a very singular
coincidence, Captain Collinson, who commanded
the Enterprise, the companion ship to the
Investigator, threw out a bottle which found
a resting-place near the other bottle, but
under very different circumstances. M'Clure
launched his bottle near Cape Verde Islands.
Collinson launched his, six hundred miles
farther south, and nine days afterwards; yet
both bottles found their way to the Honduras
coast, as if a fellow feeling actuated them as
well as the captains.

So successful, or at least interesting, has
this bottle system become, that Commander
Becher was enabled to give a new and much
enlarged bottle-chart in November eighteen
hundred and fifty-two. This chart contains a
register of sixty-two bottles, in addition to
those given in the former chart. In the one
chart as in the other, the voyages taken
by the bottles frequently give actual
information of the nature of a particular current
in a particular sea, or indicate where a certain
vessel was at a certain time. If even a small
amount only of information can be conveyed
on either of these two points, it would amply
repay the trouble of launching a whole fleet
of bottles. Some of the papers in the bottles
contain short but affecting narratives; the
ship is stranded or water-logged; the crew
can hardly reckon on another hour of life with
any probability; and their captain pens a
few words, in the hope that friends at home
may perchance learn thereby the probable
fate of the hapless ship. Many instances have
occurred within the last few years, in which
a bottle has been the only messenger of
correct information; a vessel has been so long
unheard of, that a disastrous fate seems to
have been certain; but this fate is not
known until a floating bottle brings news of
the crew, down to nearly the last hour of their
existence. Sometimes, the papers contain a
few doggerel lines, or a bit of sentiment, or a
touch of poetry—not much to be commended,
for its own merits; but, even here, if the
date and position be given, the bottle which
contains the poetry is by no means an
unprofitable bottle.

One of the most extraordinary bottle
voyages, or cask voyages, yet recorded, occupied
public attention a year or two ago. The story
runs thus:

Captain D'Auberville, in the bark Chieftain,
of Boston, put into Gibraltar on the
twenty-seventh of August, eighteen hundred
and fifty-one. He went, with two of his
passengers, across the Straits to Mount Abylus,
on the African coast; as they were on the
point of returning, one of the crew picked
up what appeared to be a piece of rock, but
which the captain thought to be a kind of
pumice-stone. On examination, it was found to
be a cedar keg completely incrusted with
barnacles and other marine shells. The keg was
opened, and within was found a cocoa-nut,
enveloped in a kind of gum or resinous
substance. Within the cocoa-nut shell was a
piece of parchment covered with very old
writing, which none of those present could
read. An American merchant in Gibraltar