484 LOUIS AGASSIZ. 



view from your visit to Florida. . . . You 

 say I shall smile at your plans, — instead of 

 which, they have been smiled on ; now, there 

 is a point for you, — a true Saxon distinction. 

 If you succeed (and did you ever fail ! ?) 

 in developing for our Coast Survey the nature, 

 structure, growth, and all that, of the Florida 

 reefs, you will have conferred upon the coun- 

 try a priceless favor. . . . 



The Superintendent of the Coast Survey 

 never had cause to regret the carte-blanche 

 he had thus given. A few weeks, with the 

 facilities so liberally afforded, gave Agassiz 

 a clew to all the phenomena he had been 

 commissioned to examine, and enabled him to 

 explain the relation between the keys and the 

 outer and inner reefs, and the mud swamps, 

 or more open channels, dividing them, and 

 to connect these again with the hummocks 

 and everglades of the main-land. It remains 

 to be seen whether his theory will hold good, 

 that the whole or the greater part of the Flor- 

 ida peninsula has, like its southern portion, 

 been built up of concentric reefs. But his 

 explanation of the present reefs, their struc- 

 ture, laws of growth, relations to each other 

 and to the main-land, as well as to the Gulf 



