PROCEEDINGS OF UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 79 



where there is the same or greater drainage, yet no such trouble known; 

 or of the Withlacoochee, Suwanee, and a dozen other streams draining 

 swamps like the Ofeekiuofee, in whose tangled recesses grow plants as 

 noxious as those farther south, yet whose discharging currents do no 

 harm to the fishes I Moreover, in the Manatee Eiver itself no tish were 

 killed above the free range of the tides, though daily breasting the 

 swamp overflow. 



Some, discarding any theory of the decoctioii of poison from plants as 

 an exj^lanatiou, will tell you that the excess of rainwater discharged by 

 the rivers so freshened the surf as to cause the death of ail shore- swim- 

 ming fishes. This, as near as I can make it out, is ]\Ir. Moore's exi>la- 

 nation of the mortality at Egmont Key. 



In a few confined spots, where fishes could not escape at will, this 

 might now and then cause a death; but it is notorious that the fishes 

 of the Gulf coast make little or no distinction between salt and fresh 

 water. Alligators swim to the outermost keys, and the best sheeps- 

 head caught are those far up the Caloosahatchie, uhere the stream is 

 always sweet, while the por[)oise and shark chase the mullet away in 

 toward the head of the bayous, or until the river-channel gets too shal- 

 low for them to swim farther. A little fresh water, or a good deal, 

 more or less, would receive no attention whatever from a Floridau fish. 

 The Mississippi has been deluging the Gulf with a well-nigh Amazonian 

 volume of water* fresh not only, but thick and nasty, yet no one sup- 

 poses the fishes off the delta are obliged to stay in its murky flood unless 

 they choose, or, if they do, that they suffer by it, except to the palate 

 of the epicure. 



But a more cogent argument, from facts perhaps overlooked hereto- 

 fore*, exists against any theory which see^s to explain the destruction of 

 marine life inside the Florida reefs by any landward agency. This is 

 that it was in all cases the dwellers on the bottoui that perished first, 

 while the surface-feeders were the last to be affected, and as a rule 

 escaped altogether. (Until 18S0, I was told, no mullets were ever 

 known to be killed.) It was the death of sponges, couchs, sea-anemones, 

 crawling horseshoe-crabs, of toad-fish, cow-fish, skates, and the like, 

 which keep close down on the bottom, that first apj)rised the fisher- 

 men of thfi presence of their dreaded and mysterious enemy. Next 

 came the bodies of red-fish, groupers, pompanos, and other deep swim- 

 mers, and last of all a few mullets and sharks. Fresh water, tinctured 

 with tannin or untinctured, would not etiect this. It would float on the 

 surface, having a lesser density. If it exerted a noxious influence it 

 would be the surface-life that would first sucmmb, the bottom-life long- 

 est escape. But quite the reverse has beeu the case, and this, with 

 other appearances, leads to the conclusion that the "i)oison" springs 

 from the bottom of the sea, or is formed in its waters. 



The only way to account for tiiis is by supposing that eruptions of 

 Tolcanic gases may have taken place through the bottom of the sea 



