BOTTLE -CHART, BOTTLE -PAPERS. A chart which purports to show the track of sealed bottles thrown from ships into the sea. It is a well-known practice, on long voyages, to throw sealed bottles containing sonic intelligenee into the sea. in the hope that these messengers may be picked up, and the information inclosed may reach its proper destination. The frequency of these instances at length led to the inference that by such means the determination of currents might be illustrated. Lieutenant Beeeher, an English naval officer, has the merit of having con structed. in 1843, a chart of bottle voyages in the Atlantic, his facts being drawn from the numerous cases that had oceurred. The time which elapses between the launching of the bottle from the ship and the finding it on shore, or picking up by sonic other ship, has varied from a few days to sixteen years; while the straight line distance between the two points has varied from a few miles to 5000 miles. of the actual length of the curved line followed by the bottle, little or nothing is known: but some are believed to have exceeded 8000 miles. The bottle-chart
has been reedited and reengraved from time to time, and published in the Nautical Magazine; it is marked by several hundred straight lines, each drawn from the latitude and longitude of immersion to the latitude and longitude of the finding. Charts of this sort are now prepared at the United States Hydrographie Office, not for general circulation, but for information of the general office: and from the records thus established cur rent-charts are prepared and corrected. Papers printed in several languages are furnished by the hydrographer to masters of ships for the pur pose of putting in bottles; the paper contains a request for their return when found to the near est United States consul, who will forward them to Washington. with a statement in regard to the circumstances of their discovery.