18 TRANSACTIONS OF THE WAGNER FREE 



for determination, among which I recognized the giant Fasciolaria 

 gigantea, pear-conch (Fulgur pcii'crsus), and clam ( Venus mercenaria f), did 

 not permit me to settle the question. I strongly incline to the Pliocene 

 age of the deposit, inasmuch as we subsequently found the same fossils 

 occupying a nearly similar position along the upper Caloosahatchie, and 

 in a stratum whose Pliocene age was placed beyond question. Still, from 

 this correspondence alone, I should not like to pronounce too positively 

 on the matter of correlation. 



From Little Sarasota Inlet to Casey's Pass the ocean front is made up 

 of a vast shell bank, three to five feet or more in thickness a non-indurated 

 coquina, if so it might be termed which at the time of our visit was 

 being rapidly destroyed through the action of the surf. The beach was 

 strewn with dead shells, among which I in vain searched for a living 

 specimen. We dragged in twenty feet of water, but the dredge struck 

 on an unproductive shell-bottom, and brought principally fragments to 

 the surface. The dredge was again thrown over just beyond Casey's 

 Pass, bringing up fragments of arenaceous and serpuloid rock, besides 

 numerous dead shells, principally of the genera Area, Cardita, and Venus, 

 the greater number of which were stained pink through some peculiar 

 process of ferric oxydation. We also obtained several branches of 

 an Oculina, still retaining much of the colored animal substance or 

 ccenosarc, which would go far toward confirming the assertion of our 

 captain that a submerged coral reef exists opposite this point at a distance 

 of a few miles from the coast. None of the coral-polyps were visible in 

 the mass. We dragged again off Stump's Pass, in water of 10-15 feet, 

 and obtained among other things a beautiful assortment of the large 

 sand star-fish, Luidia clathrata. 



LITTLE AND BIG GASPARILLA INLETS. We made Little Gasparilla Inlet 

 on the afternoon of Feb. 24th, anchoring for the night. This is considered 

 to be one of the best collecting grounds on the coast, and our explorations 

 on the following morning fully confirmed this impression, at least so far 

 as our own personal experiences would permit us to form a judgment. 

 The numerous shoals and grass flats, protected and exposed bayous or 

 inlets, afford an almost endless variety of retreats to the different animal 

 forms that abound here, and serve in great measure to circumscribe the 

 individual habitats. Thus, one spot would be largely relegated to a 

 species of Cerithium (C. mnscannit), another to a second species of the 

 same genus (C.ferrugincuiti), and a third to an association of both these 

 forms. In one of the inlets I found large quantities of the green shells of 

 Fasciolaria tulipa inhabited by the Clibanarius viltatus, the combined colony, 

 as if with a common impulse, moving in one given direction. The corre- 

 spondence existing between the color-tints of the hermit and that of its 



