the Coast-Survey is seen to be the right arm of our navy.  Most of the leaders in our late naval expeditions have been men trained in its service, and familiar with all the harbors, with every bay and inlet of our Southern coasts, from having been engaged in the extensive researches undertaken by Dr. Bache and carried out under his guidance.  Many, even, of the pilots of our Southern fleets are men who have been employed upon this work, and owe their knowledge of the coast to their former occupation.  It is a singular fact, that at this very time, when the whole country feels its obligation to the men who have devoted so many years of their lives to these investigations, a proposition should have been brought forward in Congress for the suspension of the Coast-Survey on economical grounds.  Happily, the almost unanimous rejection of this proposition has shown the appreciation in which the work is held by our national legislature.  Even without reference to their practical usefulness, it is a sad sign, when, in the hour of her distress, a nation sacrifices first her intellectual institutions.  Then more than ever, when she needs all the culture, all the wisdom, all the comprehensiveness of her best intellects, should she foster the institution that have fostered them, in which they have been trained to do good service to their country in her time of need.

Several of the Florida Keys, such as Key West and Indian Key, are already large, inhabited islands, several miles in extent.  The interval between them and the main-land is gradually filling up by a process similar to that by which the islands themselves were formed.  The gentle landward slope of the Reef and the channel between it and the shore are covered with a growth of the more branching lighter Corals, such as Sea-Fans, Coral-lines, etc., answering the same purpose as the intricate roots of the Mangrove-tree.  All the debris of the Reef, as well as the sand and mud washed from the shore, collect in this net-work of Coral growth within the channel, and soon transform it into a continuous mass, with a certain degree of consistence and solidity.  This forms the foundation of the mud-flats which are now rapidly filling the channel and must eventually connect the Keys of Florida with the present shore of the peninsula.

Outside the Keys, but not separated from them by so great a distance as that which intervenes between them and the main-land, there stretches beneath the water another Reef, abrupt, like the first, on its seaward side, but sloping gently toward the inner Reef, and divided from it by a channel.  This outer Reef and channel are, however, in a much less advanced state than the preceding ones; only here and there a sand-flat large enough to afford a foundation for a beacon or a lighthouse shows that this Reef also is gradually coming to the surface, and that a series of islands corresponding to the Keys must eventually be formed upon its summit.  Some of my readers