About five derelicts are reported daily, about 32 a week, about 132 a month, and nearly 1,600 a year on the average. A large number are reported which are unknown. About 90 annually are reported bottom up, or 30 per cent. of the unidentified derelicts annually afloat. From 1887 to 1896 the Hydrographic Office received 1,944 reports of 482 derelicts, which show that the wrecks were reported on an average of about four times. The Fannie E. Wolston, abandoned and adrift from Oct. 15, 1891, for several years, covered over 8,500 miles in about 900 days, and endured weather which sent many sound ships to the bottom.

BOTTLE PAPERS.

One of the most fruitful sources of information to the Hydrographic Office is the sealed bottle. Every captain, before starting on a voyage is furnished a number of bottles, with a printed form for each with directions in seven languages, in which is to be entered the time and place at which the bottle is cast overboard, and, in case it is recovered, also the time and place of its recovery, after which it is transmitted to a convenient United States consul or to Washington.

The special purpose of the sealed bottle is to give indication of the strength of the ocean currents. Bottles have been recovered that have floated over 4,000 miles, and others that have been in the water over a year. The vessels of the Navy have been dropping bottles overboard for some time past. The most remarkable example was that in which a bottle traveled 6,000 miles in 674 days, approximately at the rate of 8.9 miles a day. It traveled from 60° S. lat. and 60° W. long. to Western Australia. The longest distance made by any bottle covered 6,300 miles, which was made in a little over three years, or nearly six miles a day.

About the fastest traveler of all these "bottle papers," went about 2,400 miles at 26 miles a day on the average. Another bottle was set afloat from the ship Patriarch, April 1, 1887, in lat. 1° 7' S., long. 25° 54′ W., and was picked up on Galveston Island, in the Gulf of Mexico,

May 18, 1888, having traveled 5,500 miles in 413 days, at the rate of 13.5 miles per 24 hours. Taken collectively the paths followed by these floating bottles give a good idea of the drift currents of the North Atlantic.

MAIL CARRIED BY CURRENTS.

The island of St. Kilda is often visited by tourist steamers in the summer, but its regular mail communication with the mainland, some 150 miles distant, is confined to the annual visits of the steamer which brings the factor and his stores. But if at other times the inhabitants desire to communicate with Great Britain they employ the following curious device: A man cuts the rough model of a boat from a billet of wood, hollows it partly out, places in the hollow a tin or small bottle containing a letter, nails on a deck, and when the wind is blowing toward the mainland launches the tiny craft, having first connected it with a bladder, which drives along before the wind and acts as a tug to the little man boat. But the set of the Gulf Stream frequently drives this curious craft out of its course, and as often as not it reaches the Shetland Isles or the coast of Norway, where, however, the letter is pretty sure to be found and posted to its destination.

OIL IN STORMS AT SEA.

The utility and effect of oil in storms at sea was first discovered by whaling vessels, in high seas, which were surrounded by the oil from dead whales. The Hydrographic Office of the Navy Department has been engaged in collecting data to determine under what circumstances the use of oil is most efficacious in diminishing the danger of breaking seas during gales of wind. The following are among the most striking accounts received:

In November, 1881, the steamship Venice, from Savannah to Europe with cotton, while running before a heavy northwest gale was boarded by a tremendous sea. The captain determined to heave to, and men were stationed to pour oil down the closet chutes forward and

The vessel

As she kept

to throw waste, soaked in oil, to windward. came round without shipping any water. falling off, it was concluded to put her again before the sea, which was done without trouble, and it was found that she kept perfectly dry as long as the oil was used. Again, in January, 1884, while crossing the Atlantic to New York, after running before a northwest gale for some time, she was laid to without difficulty or danger by using oil in the manner stated.

Captain Ritchie, of the English steamer Fern Holme, while on his last voyage from Baltimore to Shields, used oil bags while running before a west-southwest gale. He hung one over each side, just forward of the bridge, and they prevented the ship from taking water on deck. First Officer W. Maltjen, of the German steamer Colon, in December, 1884, used oil bags with remarkable effect. Two bags filled with oil were hung over the bow. The oil spreading over the surface prevented the waves from breaking, and the ship rode quite easily during the continuance of the gale.

Captain Jones, of the British steamer Chicago, while rescuing the crew of the brig Fedore, used oil with best results. It was blowing a heavy gale, with very high seas. The Chicago ran to windward of the Fedore, and during a lull, oil having been poured on the water, the port lifeboat was successfully launched and started. A can of oil was taken in the boat, and by using this the seas were kept down in the immediate vicinity, though they broke in masses of foam a short distance away. As the boat approached the Fedore, the crew of that vessel. poured oil on the water, which so calmed the sea that the boat got alongside and rescued the shipwrecked crew without sustaining any injury. About half a gallon of oil was used by the lifeboat during her trip.

SOAPSUDS.

Experiments have shown that soapsuds will reduce a sea. almost as well as oil. The first trial was made on the Scandia, in a storm on the Atlantic. A large quantity of soap and water was discharged over the bow, and its

effect was nearly instantaneous, the height of the waves being so diminished that the vessel could be managed without difficulty. The steamer Senegal, struck by a squall in the Adriatic, used soap and water with the same result. Six pounds of soap were dissolved in 70 quarts of water, and poured on some unravelled ropes, down which it ran slowly into the sea over the bow. This made a quiet space about ten yards wide, preventing the waves from breaking over the vessel to any great extent.

ICEBERGS.

An Atlantic craft which carries no lights, which makes no signal, which turns neither to the right nor to the left for approaching ships, bound out from Polar ports to sunny seas, is the iceberg.

Icebergs are a great source of danger to transatlantic navigation from March to August every year. Sometimes, but very seldom, bergs have been fallen in with much earlier. On New Year's day, 1884, a berg was passed by the Sully in 45° N. 48° W., and on Jan. 3, 1896, one was reported in almost the same position. The northern ice barrier is broken up by the increasing power of the sun's rays as he travels northward along the ecliptic. Fields of ice, sometimes having an area of 100 square miles, are detached, and a free exit afforded for the imprisoned icebergs. Icebergs and field ice are borne to the southward by the cold current that follows the bend of the land from Labrador to Florida. Field ice is formed on the sea surface during the Arctic winter, but bergs have their origin far inland, and are the growth of years. Greenland glaciers glide down their gentle slopes into the sea, and the upward pressure of the water breaks off their snouts to form the icebergs of the North Atlantic. Ancient glaciers have written their story on the mountains of Great Britain, and bergs were formed a little way off the west coast of Ireland during the glacial period.

There exists a marked difference in form between the bergs of the two hemispheres. Arctic bergs are of irregu

lar shape, with lofty pinnacles, cloud-capped towers, and glittering domes; whereas the southern bergs are flattopped and solid-looking. The former reach the sea by narrow fiords, but the formation of the latter is more regular. It is well to give these splendid specimens of Nature's handiwork a wide berth, for they frequently turn somersaults, owing to the wasting away of their immersed portions. A few years ago immense pieces of ice fell from a berg on to the deck of a ship that had approached too close to it while in this transitory state, carrying away her masts and maiming some of the crew. Again, ships have been sunk by colliding with submerged portions of bergs, extending from their visible volume like reefs of rocks from a bold sea coast. Hayes compared one that he saw to the Colossus of Rhodes. His ship could have sailed under the arch of ice formed in the heart of the berg.

North Atlantic bergs are neither so large nor so numerous as those met with in the Southern Ocean, between the Falkland Islands and the Cape of Good Hope. In 1854-1855 an enormous ice island was drifting in about 32° S., 24° W., for several months, and was passed by many ships. It was 300 feet high, 60 miles long, and 40 miles wide, and was in shape like a horseshoe. Its two sides inclosed a sheltered bay measuring 40 miles across. large emigrant ship, the Guiding Star, sailed into this icy bay and was lost with all hands. A similar, but smaller, mass of ice was met with in the North Atlantic by the Agra. She ran into a bay formed in the centre of an iceberg, in 42° N. latitude, which was a mile and a half across, and she experienced great difficulty in beating out again.

A

A cubic foot of ice weighs about 930 ounces, but the same volume of sea water weighs 1,280 ounces. Hence ice floats on water and about one-ninth only of the volume of a berg is exposed to view. There are several well authenticated instances of bergs 1,000 feet high having been sighted in the Southern Ocean, so that this would give the total height of them as about 9,000 feet-a fairly good sized mass of solid water. In May, 1895, the Inchgreen passed close alongside of a berg that Captain Miller