1883.; 
Florida . 
723 
VI. FLORIDA. 
By W. D. Gunning. 
§ N Palm Sunday ( Pasqua Florida ) of the year 1512 
Ponce de Leon discovered the peninsula which forms 
the eastern boundary of the Mexican Gulf, and named 
it after the day Florida. For many years the name covered 
what are now the Carolinas, North and South, and a portion 
of Georgia, Mississippi, and Louisiana. 
Florida is the youngest portion of North America. It 
lies along the trend of the Appalachian Mountains, whose 
axis is the archsean granite. A few months ago, in boring 
an artesian well at Gainsville, this same granite was struck. 
We may assume that it underlies the whole peninsula, and 
is the foundation on which the coralline structure was built. 
Florida is a succession of coral reefs. Geologically it is 
young, as all the fossils are of living species. 
As the peninsula nowhere rises more than 250 feet above 
the sea, its features are simple and monotonous. The rivers 
could not sculpture the face of the land into valleys or 
canyons. The bane of the high table-land on our Pacific 
slope is over-drainage ; the bane of Florida is under-drainage. 
The Colorado dashes wildly through a gorge of its own 
cutting, 5000 feet deep. The Saint John flows sluggishly in 
a channel barely deep enough to carry its face below the 
bounding marsh or “ scrub, ” or pine-land. A result of this 
under-drainage is an immense acreage of swamp-land. 
While in the geologic calendar Florida bears the date of 
yesterday, its flora and fauna are ancient. The Tapodium, 
known as the Bald Cypress, is the largest tree on our 
Atlantic slope. A faCt of deep interest is that this cypress 
stands in close relationship to the Sequoia of California and 
Glyptostrobus of Japan. The Sequoia gigantea is restricted 
to a few isolated patches in the Sierras. The Tapodium 
disticlium grows on the swamps and on the low river-banks 
of our Southern Atlantic States. Glyptostrobus , Sequoia , and 
Tapodium have descended from a common stock. Their 
geographical distribution is evidence of great antiquity. 
Their divergence in botanical structure and habitat — 
Sequoia adapting itself to an altitude of 6000 feet, and Tapo- 
dium to marshes at the sea-level — is evidence that the dis- 
persion occurred long ago. 
