Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 May 2009
I. Introduction.
Some eighteen months ago the Director of the Plymouth Laboratory of the Marine Biological Association decided to carry out a series of investigations concerning the surface currents of the English Channel at different seasons of the year, and for a series of years, by means of properly devised floating bodies which would attract attention when standed on the shore, and the recovery of which could without difficulty be recorded. At the commencement of the investigation Mr. Allen communicated his scheme to the editors of the west-country Press, and these gentlemen kindly gave publicity to the plan, the success of which depended very largely upon the co-operation of residents and visitors frequenting the sea-shore. Mr. Allen's letter expresses so clearly the object and method of the investigation, that I cannot do better than reproduce it here:—
page 215 note * This is the table authorised by the Meteorological Office in 1875 after the publication of Scott's paper, with the addition of a table of pressure-equivalents. The latter are computed from the velocities by multiplying the squares of the velocities by the factor 0.005, and expressing the results as far as possible in whole numbers. A more recent table of velocity-equivalents by Mr. Curtis (Quart. Jour. Met. Soc., XXIII., 1897), has been kindly forwarded to me by Mr. Scott, but reached me too late for use in the present report. It differs from Mr. Scott's table in assigning somewhat lower velocities to all the figures of the Beaufort scale.
page 215 note † Fifteenth Annual Report of the S.F.B., Part III., 1897, p. 357.