SECOND ANNUAL REPORT—STRATIGRAPHIC GEOLOGY. 
127 
In addition to the Caloosahatchee marl already described, Dali 
mentions several localities on other streams entering Charlotte Har¬ 
bor A 
Near the north end of Charlotte harbor a small creek comes in from the east 
called Alligator Creek. Here Mr. Willcox found an extension of the Caloosa¬ 
hatchee beds. The banks are about 12 feet high, the upper half being pure sand; 
the lower half contains fossils of Pliocene age, mollusks, barnacles, and flat 
Echinidae. They differ from the Caloosahatchee deposits in being in pure sand 
instead of marl as a matrix. The upper half of the fossiliferous stratum shows 
the shallow-water fauna, with its usual partial admixture of strictly Pliocene 
extinct species. Some parts of the bed are united by siliceous cementation into 
a hard rock. * * * The banks are higher here than on the Caloosahatchee, 
being 25 feet at the highest point, but the difference is chiefly of unfossiliferous 
marine sand 12 feet deep. Then comes about 2 feet of shallow water fauna with 
some Pliocene species, below which is a hard limestone stratum 2 or 3 feet 
thick, beneath which is a bed of conchiferous-marl, like that of the Caloosa¬ 
hatchee. There are slight differences in the fauna, such as might be expected 
at points 20 miles apart. * * * 
Here (on the Miakka River) Mr. Willcox found a bed of lime rock at the 
sea level with uncharacteristic species poorly preserved. Above the lime rock 
are beds of shell marl considerably mixed with sand. In this deposit was col¬ 
lected about forty species of shells, of which about 10 per cent were extinct 
Pliocene species. This bed seems to have fewer extinct species than the Caloosa¬ 
hatchee marls and may be regarded as a little younger, perhaps corresponding 
to the Planorbis rock, which seems to be absent on the Miakka. 
Along Rocky Creek, which falls into Lemon Bay, near Stump Pass, in about 
latitude 26° 55' west from the Miakka, a bed of Venus cancellata rises to about 
a foot above the water, or in many places forms the bed of the stream. It is 
probably the upper shallow water layer of the Pliocene, or Ccrithidea scalata 
Heilprin, a Pliocene species, has been found nearby on the beach of the bay. 
On Peace Creek there are no banks high enough to afford a section, and no 
trace of Pliocene yet observed up to 3 miles above Fort Ogden. 
Farther north, on Peace Creek, the Caloosahatchee beds appear at Shell 
Point, 3 miles above Arcadia, as previously described; and I was informed that 
the same bed occurs on Joshua Creek, near Nocatee, and at a point on Peace 
Creek 6 miles below the works at Arcadia, between that place and Fort Ogden. 
The same oyster bed is conspicuous in the banks of a small stream just north 
of the railroad station at Zolfo Springs. This stream, a feeder of Peace Creek 
from the east, has cut quite a deep gully and the oyster bed occurs in the vertical 
sides about 2 feet, or possibly less, above the water when the latter is low, as in 
January, when I observed it. Above the oyster bed, the elevation cut by the 
stream is composed of some 20 or 25 feet of yellow sand, with a foot or two 
of the white sand covering it. Some portions of the yellow sand here, as at 
Shell Point, are quite indurated and stand vertically like rock. The section can 
be well observed from the railway culvert. 
Considerably east of Peace Creek beds of marl containing “large clams” 
have been reported to Mr. Willcox as occurring on the banks of Arbuckle Creek. 
Something of the same sort on the Kissimmee River, near Fort Kissimmee, was 
1 Dali, Wm, H., Neocene of North America, U. S- Geol. Survey Bull. No. 84, 
1892, pp. 147-148. 
