ANNUAL REPORT-EARLY INVESTIGATIONS. 6$ 
nize an upward movement to account for the present ele¬ 
vation of this region. 
Louis Agassiz (6) and Hunt (103), both of whom 
examined the keys with care, were of the opinion that no 
such movement had occurred. 
In order to account for the character of the orange 
sands of Mississippi and Louisiana, Professor E. W. Hil- 
gard 1 (94) believes it necessary to assume that previous 
to its deposition the Gulf coast suffered an elevation of 
at least 450 feet above its present level, followed during 
the Champlain epoch by a slow depression of at least 
twice that amount, with finally a re-elevation of at least 
450 feet. While these minor changes of elevation are be¬ 
lieved by Hilgard to have affected more particularly 
the axis of the Mississippi Valley, they doubtless also 
extended to Florida. 
Smith (186), in summarizing the geological history of 
Florida, notes that the axis of elevation which brought 
the Vicksburg Limestone above sea, probably lay to the 
west of the center of the present peninsula, the western 
coast then lying probably 100 miles west of its present 
position. To account for the Orange Sand as then under¬ 
stood, Smith postulates the submergence of Florida dur¬ 
ing the Champlain epoch, followed by a re-elevation to 
the present height. 
The elevations which were believed to have affected the 
West India. Islands during the early Quarternary led 
Dana (53) to assume that Florida was necessarily 
affected by the same movements. Dana argues further 
that the subsidence that brought Florida to its present 
level occurred during the era of formation of the Florida 
coral reefs. A mild subsidence of the west coast of 
Florida to account for the surface configuration was sug¬ 
gested by Heilprin (92) in 1887. Mild folds, with axis 
parallel to the peninsula, were observed by Dali along the 
Caloosahatchee River in 1887 (42). 
Kost, in 1887, recognized the anticlinal axis traversing 
the Florida peninsula (113), while Johnson (105), in 
