PRELIMINARY REPORT ON PEAT. 
243 
in Florida, mostly in the dry season, without noticing any variation 
in its color; and as in its lower courses it has cut a channel through 
limestone, it may without serious error be regarded as a case of 
swamp water on calcareous rock. 
The estuarine swamps and marshes at the mouth of this river 
are quite interesting, and in some respects unique. A mile or two 
from the coast.the river divides, enclosing between its arms an is¬ 
land a few thousand acres in extent, known as Hog Island. The 
coastward edge of this island is marsh, similar in general ap¬ 
pearance to the salt marshes elsewhere along the Gulf hammock 
coast, but with hardly a trace of salt water vegetation. The 
explanation of this rather anomalous occurrence of fresh water 
vegetation immediately on the borders of the Gulf of Mexico, 
without the protection of any sort of barrier beach, is probably to 
be found in the extreme shallowness of the water. According to 
the U. S. Coast SBvey charts, there are places in the immediate 
vicinity where the Gulf has a depth of only a foot or two, and 
several miles out where it is only five feet deep. Under these 
conditions the fresh water which is continually pouring out of the 
two mouths of the river must make the salt water very dilute for 
some distance in every direction. 
Going up either mouth of the river, small trees, of every kind 
mentioned in the following list except perhaps the last two, soon 
begin to appear in the marshes, gradually become larger and denser 
until in the inland half of the island they form a compact forest. 
There is practically no dry land on the island, the soil being all 
peat or muck, so that it is not a very easy place to explore. On 
April 15, 1910, I went around it in a launch, penetrated into the 
interior on foot a short distance in two or three places, and identi¬ 
fied the following plants: 
TREES 
Sabal Palmetto (cabbage palmetto) 
Tax odium distichum (cypress) 
Magnolia glauca (bay) 
Fraxinus profunda ? (ash) 
Nyssa biflora (black gum) 
Acer rubrum (maple) 
Juniperus Virginiana (cedar) 
Persea pubescens (red bay) 
SHRUBS AND WOODY VINES 
Myrica cerifera (myrtle) 
Rhus radicans (poison ivy) 
Phorcbdendron flavescens (mistle- 
Cornus strictaf 
Parthenocissus quinquefolia (Vir¬ 
ginia creeper) 
Baccharis halimifolia 
Aster Carolinianus 
toe) 
I tea Virginica 
