Those thrown overboard in the Mexican Gulf, to the north of Cape Catoche of Yucatan, are hurried away with it and cast on the American shore, near St. Augustine and Charleston. Other instances show the effects of the counter-current of the Gulf-stream on its eastern or ocean side, in driving bottles to the south-east, a current that must have affected the ships of Columbus in his first discovery, and which, upon his return northward among the islands, without doubt met and opposed his progress. A curious example of the effects of the wind on the surface-waters is shown by a bottle thrown over from H.M.S. _Vulcan_ in the midst of the Gulf-stream, about 130 miles southward of Cape Hatteras. The ship was on her way to Bermuda, where she arrived, and the bottle, instead of being carried by the current to the north-east like others, actually went after her and arrived at Bermuda also. But we find noted on the paper that a strong northerly wind was blowing when the bottle started. This must have been sufficient to have checked its progress to the north-east, but allowed it to approach the eastern border of the Gulf-stream, whence it would drift into the eddy or counter-current, and thus become thrown on Bermuda. Again, between the Gulf-stream and the American coast bottles have found their way to that shore, while those to the northward of the parallel of 40° have invariably gone eastward; and many thrown over near the meridian of 20° have drifted into the Bay of Biscay, and been cast on the French coast. Among the numbers of bottles which have travelled westward with the equatorial and tropical current two are remarkable, as being thrown overboard about 700 miles from each other and yet arriving at nearly the same destination. They were thrown from sister-ships when on their errand of carrying relief, by way of Behring Strait, to Franklin and his devoted crew. The first was dropped from the _Investigator_, Sir R. Maclure, in lat. 12°, long. 26°, the 27th of February, 1850, and was found on the 27th August following on Ambergris Cay, on the Yucatan coast; the second was sent afloat on the 3rd March, 1850, by Captain Collinson, in the _Enterprise_, in lat. 1° N., long. 26° W., and drifted to the coast inside of that cay, about 30 miles to the northward of it. That the two bottles should take their western course was to be expected; but that they should have gone to resting-places so near each other is singular, considering that their points of starting were so far asunder. The Gulf-stream, the limits of which are so clearly intimated by these little messengers, is but a sample of a grand system of currents which are produced by the unequal temperature of the different zones. These currents of hot and cold water are accompanied by atmospheric changes equally extraordinary; and, taken together, they largely affect the course of the navigator from the old to the new world, and, not unfrequently, are the cause of the most fearful shipwrecks.