MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 157 
NOTE. 
Tur discovery by Professor Shaler of the northern extension of the great 
Florida Reef beyond Key Biscayne, on the east shore of the southern extremity 
of Florida, as far as Jupiter Inlet, throws a good deal of light on the probable 
mode of formation of the Everglades. An examination of the map of South- 
ern Florida in the Memoirs of the Museum of Comparative Zodlogy, Vol. VIL, 
No. 1, Plate XXIIL., or of the map (Plate VI.) in my Memoir on the Tortugas, 
Memoirs of the American Academy, Vol. XI., 1883, or in the “Three Cruises 
of the Blake,” page 52, shows that in all probability the process of land-mak- 
ing is simply more advanced in the Everglades than in the triangular stretch 
of mud flats extending westward from the northern keys of Florida beyond 
Cape Sable, and from that base in a general southwesterly direction to the Mar- 
quesas. The presence of fossil reefs more or less concentric with the line of 
keys induced Professor Agassiz, in his Report on the Florida Reefs, to look 
upon the Everglades as holding to those reefs very much the same relation 
which the mud flats to the west of the main line of reefs hold to the latter. 
Geologists ? have, as a general rule, been opposed to this view, but they have 
only examined the mainland north of the Everglades, and no geologist has as 
yet penetrated farther into the Everglades than Professor Agassiz and his party. 
A careful examination of the Everglades alone can determine whether their 
fossil reefs are built upon a base consisting of the rocks which have been ex- 
amined by Tuomey and others at Tampa Bay and Charlotte Harbor, or whether 
1 Annual Report of the Superintendent of the Coast Survey, 1851. Report on 
the Florida Reefs, by Louis Agassiz. Memoirs of the Museum of Comparative 
Zodlogy, Vol. VII. No. 1, 1880, pp. 31, 57. 
* Report of Buckingham Smith on the Drainage of the Everglades. Heilprin, 
Trans. Wagner Free Institute of Science, Vol. I., May, 1887. Heilprin’s explora- 
tions were limited to the portions of the west coast of Florida included between 
Cedar Keys and Punta Rassa, and did not touch the Everglade district or the great 
Florida Reef. Likewise, the earlier researches of Conrad and Tuomey, and the sub- 
sequent ones of Smith, Dall, and others, have all stopped short at the Everglades, 
and the structure of the northern extremity of Florida has nothing whatever to do 
with the formation of the coral reefs from Key Biscayne south. How far north this 
‘reef structure extends is another point, and Shaler’s interesting discovery goes far 
towards giving usa clue to the mode of formation of the Everglades. That the 
northern part of the peninsula of Florida is not made up of concentric coral reefs is 
now very clearly demonstrated by geological and paleontological evidence. What 
1s the southern extension of the formations which extend to the northern edge of 
the Everglades, no one knows as yet. 
