198 E. B. Hunt on the Florida Reef. 
and which may prove a needful supplement to Prof. Agassiz’s 
twenty miles long, the deepest water on it being twenty fath- 
oms, and all within or east of it being still shoaler and character 
ized by singular evenness of bottom. The Straits of Florida, 
between the reef and the Cuban coast, are about a hundred miles 
wide, and the bottom slopes from the reef down to eight hundred 
fathoms just off the submerged cliffs of Cuba. The hundred 
fathom curve of the bottom is about seven miles out from Cape 
Florida, and from thence to Tortugas it gradually separates far 
ther from the keys, being there. over twenty miles out, 
e well traced curve, along which this grand Florida Bank 
thrusts itself out into the deep waters of the Gulf, is strikingly 
significant of some continuous and regular agency in its pro 
duction. The adjacent flow of the Gulf Stream would most 
naturally be assumed to govern in some way the production © 
! See C. 8. Rept., 1858, App. 32. This Journal, 1859, vol. xxvii, p. 206- 
