IN LOWER FLORIDA WILDS 



the Vicksburg group of the Upper Eocene. The 

 presence of coal or carbonaceous matter has re- 

 cently been reported from wells at a depth of 

 about a thousand feet in Marion and Pasco coun- 

 ties, and this would indicate that at the time the 

 coal was formed the surface of that part of the 

 peninsula (a thousand feet below the present 

 siu-face) was elevated to at least a short distance 

 above sea level. As there are no evidences of any 

 violent disturbances throughout the entire area 

 we may presume that for a long time after the 

 deposition of this carbonaceous material there was 

 a gradual subsidence, and that the land was slowly 

 built up by marine deposits at about the same rate 

 at which the whole was subsiding. The entire 

 area of Florida south of a line from Tampa to 

 Daytona is very recent, as it belongs to the latest 

 of the geologic periods — the Quaternary. 



The region lying south of a line drawn from 

 Cape Romano on the west to about Fort Lauder- 

 dale on the east may be designated as Lower 

 Florida and this includes practically all of the 

 State which has any claim to being called tropical. 

 It embraces all the territory occupied in Florida 

 by the large Cuban and West Indian arboreal 



