12 BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 



A year or two afterward a party, of which my son was one, sounded 

 this hole and procured some water from its bottom. The hole is 137 

 feet deep and the water brackish and nauseous to the taste. I live 10 

 miles from that place and on the Gulf of Mexico, and that hole, 10 

 miles inland, is more than twice as deep as the Gulf is 10 miles from 

 the shore. You would have to go 25 miles to sea to find a i^lace as far 

 from the surface of the earth as the bottom of the hole in the middle 

 of Myaka Lake. 



A gentleman (Mr.T. J.Edmondson,of Tarpon Springs) informs me that 

 he once accidentally discovered a deep hole in Sarasoto Bay, in which 

 the water was dark and cold and fresh. He did not ascertain its depth. 



Now, all these facts go to show that there are underground streams 

 in this State, and that some of them are very large and very deep be- 

 low the surface of the earth. How large we do not know, but the pre- 

 sumption is that there are very large ones. For the water which is 

 discharged from our surface rivers does not, in my judgment, account 

 for the water that falls upon the land. There is very little fall to our 

 rivers, and all of them are stopped at their mouths by tides. The Saint 

 John's is a large river, but it is the only one on the east coast above 

 the Everglades. On the west coast there are a great many small streams 

 discharging themselves into the Gulf, but every one, except the Suwa- 

 nee, I think, is a tide- water creek. 



Now, where these underground streams empty no one knows. The 

 stream which the Myaka Lake is connected with may empty 25 miles 

 at sea, for it is about on a level with the bottom of the Gulf at that 

 distance. The surface of the lake is probably 10 feet above the surface 

 of the Gulf, and as it certaiuly communicates with the tide- water, the 

 only reason why the lake can exist with this hole in its bottom must be 

 that the underground stream completely fills the orifice out of which it 

 flows. Crystal River and Silver Spring are underground streams be- 

 fore they appear, and the Gainesville Creek was an underground stream 

 after it disappeared; and it is not at all probable that they are the only 

 ones or the largest ones in Florida. 



Now, how should water carried into the Gulf hy an underground stream 

 poison the fish? The answer is that the rock through which the water 

 flows contains pyrites. Pyrites is a compound of iron and sulphur, often 

 contaminated with arsenic. Exposed to water this substance is decom- 

 posed, and the sulphur and arsenic, if that is i)resent, unite with one of 

 the constituents of water, hydrogen, to form one of the most i)oisonous 

 gases known. It is very soluble in water, and a little water charged 

 with it would j^oison a great deal of the air which the fish absorb in 

 their gills as the water is forced through them. 



As to the presence of iron pyrites in the substratum of Florida there 

 is no doubt at all. Nothing in Manatee County is more common than 

 iron in the well-water. Some wells furnish water so thoroughly impreg- 

 nated with iron that it is unfit for the laundry. > And tl^e shores of all 



