The wrecker on the Florida reefs, who steps from the Peninsula into the marine world, will tell you there is nothing so like the land as the water.  The crystal atmosphere of this land of meridional spring, the masses of tawny green in forests of the pine, and the deeper foliage of the live-oak and wild-orange, even that fire of flower in phaenogamous plants peculiar to the Peninsula, have their fellowship and counterparts in the lustrous scenery of the submarine world.  Even the beauty of moon-like lakes and river springs is realized in the salt envelope of the under-world.  Washing the keel of the submerged vessel, or bursting with a sudden chill through the tepid waters of the Gulf, with a sensible difference to feeling and to sight, the diver recognizes a river in the strata, a wayside spring in the mid-sea fountain.

As the huge volume of many Florida springs, and their peculiar characteristic of sudden sinking, give them a distinguishable quality, so the like may be recognized in the fresh-water outbursts of the neighboring seas.  Silver Spring in Marion county tosses out three hundred million gallons per day; Manatee Spring discharges a less volume, but is noted for the presence of the sea-cow (Trichecus muriatus); Santa Fe, Econfinna, Chipola and Oscilla are rivers which, like classic Acheron, descend and disappear with a full head—­lost rivers, as they are aptly named.  Pass to the marine world, and south-west of Bataban, in the Gulf of Xagua (Cuba), a river-fountain throws up a broad white disk like a flower of water on a liquid stem, visible on the violet phosphorescence of the Caribbean Sea.  Its impetuous force makes it dangerous to unwary crafts; and, to add to its recognizable characteristics, in its pure waters is to be found the sea-cow—­found there and in Manatee Bay and Spring alone.  To the geologist such rivers are not mysteries.  The lower strata of the limestone formation are hollowed out into vast cavernous channels and chambers, through which rolls for ever the hoarse murmur of multitudinous waters.  It would require the conception of a Milton or the stern Florentine who pictured Malebolge to depict those hollow passages and lofty galleries, wrought into fantastic shapes by carbon chisels, and all pure snow-white, yet unrecognizable in the sublime horror of great darkness.

It is to the animal and vegetable coral the sea owes its arborescent and floriform scenery, the counterpart of the forest and phaenogamous beauty that adorns the land.  The home of these wonderful creatures must be visited to realize the beauty of their dwellings and the wonderful structures they produce.  A diver who explored the serene sea about the Hayti banks gives a beautiful description of the splendors of the under-world.  The white, chalky bottom is visible from the surface at a depth of one hundred feet.  Over that brilliant floor the filtered sunshine spreads a cloth of gold continually flecked with sailing shadows and fluctuating tints.  The