64 TRANSACTIONS OF THE WAGNER FREE 



elevation and subsidence still remains to be determined, but the facts 

 point strongly to the conclusion that the growth of the peninsula south- 

 ward was a nearly continuous one, without much interrupted sedimenta- 

 tion, or any great break in the chain of organic evolution to mark the 

 successive accessions of territory which the peninsula received during 

 its development. 



ROCKS OF SARASOTA BAY. The marine deposits bordering the sea on 

 Big Sarasofa Bay are mainly in the form of indurated sands, or where 

 there has been a sufficient infiltration of iron, of partially compact sand- 

 stones. Fossil remains are almost wholly wanting, being limited, as far 

 as our own observations went, almost exclusively to the casts of one or 

 more species of single coral of undetermined relationships. These we 

 found in a semi-compact yellow rock, of about three or four feet thickness, 

 at a locality known as Whittaker's. The rock has the appearance of being 

 a comparatively recent formation, and I should probably unhesitatingly 

 have referred it to the modern epoch were it not for the coral impressions 

 which it contains. For the present I feel some hesitation in assigning to 

 it a definite position, although fairly assured that it is late Tertiary, or, 

 possibly, even Post-Tertiary. The same impressions occur in a much 

 more compact and highly fossiliferous rock of White Beach, Little 

 Sarasota Bay, which in the character of its organic remains seems to 

 occupy a position intermediate between the Miocene and Pliocene series. 



The ferruginous sandrock exposed at Hanson's, whence I extracted a 

 part of the skeletal remains (converted into limonite) of man, as well as the 

 more compact terrestrial rock that appears some three-quarters of a mile 

 lower on the bay, have been discussed in the narrative (p. 15), and require 

 no further consideration at this place. The only other localities about the 

 bay where we observed fossiliferous deposits were on Philippi's Creek, an 

 eastern tributary, where a yellow arenaceous limestone, highly charged 

 with fossils, most of them in the form of casts or impressions, and but 

 barely determinable, could be observed at intervals along the shore, rising 

 about two feet out of the water. A number of the fossils appeared to be 

 identical with forms occurring in the yellow rock of the Manatee River; 

 especially was this the case with the corals and polyzoans, but the only 

 species that I could definitely locate were Pcctcn Madisomus, P.Jcffcrsonius, 

 and possibly also Area idonea. The formation is evidently either Miocene 

 or Pliocene, or one holding a position intermediate between the two. At 

 one or two spots near the mouth of the creek, well observed on the right 

 bank, this rock is seen to be overlaid by a heavy bed of coquina, some 

 three or four feet in thickness, the shell fragments composing which are 

 largely triturated, and only differ from the typical coquina of the east 

 coast in their greater compactness. This is, I believe, the first instance 



