PROCEEDINGS OF UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 75 



It appears that this mislbrtune is not a new exj)erieuce in tlie eastern 

 part of rlie Gulf of Mexico. One of the oldest residents on the Floridan 

 coast, Mr. Benjamin Curry, of Manatee, told me, what others confirmed, 

 that as far back as 1844 a wide-spread destruction of all sorts of salt- 

 water animal life occurred, apparently due to causes precisely similar to 

 those which produced the lately noticed desolation. Again, in 1854 the 

 fishes suffered all along the southern shore, and have done so at intervals 

 since to a less degree, until in 1878 an excessive fatality spread among 

 them, which was wider in the extent of its damaging effects and prob- 

 ably more destructive in point of number of victims than the later visi- 

 tation of 1880. Even the cooler half of 1S79 was not exempt from some 

 appearance of the plague. 



In regard to some of the manifestations of this deadly influence in the 

 sea during 1878, Mr. John Brady, jr., an intelligent captain, told me that 

 the time of year was January, and that the "poisoned water", to which 

 universal belief credits the death of the fishes, could easily be distin- 

 guished from the clear blue of the pure surrounding element. This 

 discolored water appeared in long patches or "stieaks", sometimes 100 

 yards wide, drifting lengthways with the flow of the tide. The earliest 

 indication of it was the floating up ot vast quantities cf dead sponges — 

 chiefly "loggerheads". All those seen by Mr. Brady were less than 40 

 miles north of Key West, in what is known as "The Bay", nor has any- 

 thing of the sort been seen at any time outside {i. e., southward or east- 

 ward) of the Florida Eeefs ; but it was soon discovered that all the hith- 

 erto profitable sponging grounds lying ofl" the coast as fur north nearly 

 as Cedar Keys, and particularly oft' the Anclotes, had been ruined. 

 These grounds are only now beginning to show signs of reprodnctive- 

 ness in sponges. At the same time, many portions of this area — for 

 example, Sarasota Bay — seem not to have been afi'ected, sufficiently at 

 least to cause the death of swimming fishes to any great extent. In 

 the case of the sponges, only a few of other species than the loggerhead 

 would l)e seen floating; but when thoy were hooked into, all were found 

 dead, tliough still clinging to the bottom. When a sponge dies natur- 

 ally it gradually becomes white at its base, through the loss of its sar- 

 codal matter, but all these were observed to have turned black. The 

 abandonment of these sponging grounds from the Reefs to Cedar Keys, 

 during the three or four years following this attack, entails a loss which 

 it is hard to estimate, because partially' compensated in the increased 

 price of the article in the market due to its consequent scarcity, and 

 because at all times the product there is an uncertain quantity; bnt I 

 hazard the opinion that $100,000 would not repair the damage to this 

 business interest alone. Had it not been for the fortunate discovery 

 just at that time of the sponge-tracts oft'Kock Island, northward of the 

 Suwanee Iliver, almost a famine in this article would have ensued. 



Concerning the attack of 1880 I am able to say more. It began sud- 

 denly, and immediately followed the terrible hurricane which is known 



