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Show REVEAL TREND OF CURRENTS Travel of Bottles Dropped Into tha Ocean Convey Information to the ,' Navy Departments. The hydrographio bureau of ths navy department is always Interested! In endeavors to ascertain, by means) of bottle messages, information as to! the movements of the oceans. These bottles contain papers that hare been, dropped overboard from vessels In many places, to drift at the mercy of the winds and waves. Many of themj have been found and picked up either, in the open sea or on shores wher they have been stranded. Knowing from their records where the bottles had been thrown overboard, over-board, the bureau has been able to trace, in a general way, the path thejn must have followed in order to reach: the places where they were found.. In one report alone there were published pub-lished the adventures of over one hundred hun-dred bottles. Being partially filled with air and-then and-then securely corked, the bottles float; on the surface of the water and goi wherever the wind and the current of the sea carry them. Each bottle con-, tains a record of the place and theJ date of its starting. Some of those found have floated for many months.j and sometimes years, and have traveled trav-eled thousand; of miles. It has been found that bottles-dropped bottles-dropped overboard between the shores' of the United States and England or France usually travel toward the; northeast, following the course of that great river in the Atlantic ocean, thai gulf stream. Bottles started off thai coasts of Spain and Africa travel, as a rule, westward until they arrive, among the West India islands. Along, the European side of the ocean the, bottle takes a southerly course andi along the American side a northerly! course. ! |