E. B. Hunt on the Florida Reef. 201 
north shores of the keys have long shallow mud slopes, some 
portions of which seem to be solidifying. he ebb tide carries 
itis sometimes encountered over thirty miles out. The eddy 
counter-current, setting perhaps two knots per hour, transports 
this white water and its suspended detritus to the westward into 
fepening water, where it has opportunity to settle as it goes, 
and finally reaches bottom some miles west of its point of for- 
mation. “Onee on the bottom, in deep water, below the action 
of the waves, nothing can remove it. Thus we have, in actual 
Operation, a perfect mechanism for triturating the coral and she 
growths, and for transporting the comminuted products, by wave 
disturbance, tidal currents and the eddy currents, to the deep 
Water farther west. These agencies being all unquestionably real 
and now active, I find no reason to doubt that they have been 
the secular causes at work extending the Florida Bank by its | 
Western extremity. 
A careful examination of the bottoms, as shown on the several 
Coast Survey charts of the reef, affords signal confirmation of 
this view. The indications of white mud, white sand, coral 
Florida Bank runs down into depths of one hundred fathoms, 
and of four hundred and sixty to the southwest, as also the bot- 
toms over the Bay of Florida, and westward to the hundred 
fathom curve, are all consistently indicative that the material of 
"worn down and transported to its present bed by 
reencies like those I have described. The entire lack of any 
bottoms in the slightest degree tinctured with Mississip 
Sa perfect refutation of the view presented by Prof. Jos. Le- 
Conte,* that the substructure of the reef, up to the depth where 
Coral growth can begin, is a result of the deposition o: 
“ippi sediment carried across the Gulf by the Gulf current. I 
Venture the assertion that these bottoms are inconsistent with 
*Y View which does not derive them from the living coral, to 
the east of their present localities. Should it be said that these 
bottoms only indicate the mere surface character of the sea-bed, 
may be replied that the great mass of the Bank substructure, 
Shooting out to the west into the Gulf, and rising above the Gulf 
bottom on both sides, as is amply shown by the 10, 20 and 100 
® This Journal, 1857, vol. xxiii, p. 46. 
