richest land to be found in the United States, and has a productive capacity for every variety of vegetable life known in the tropics that is unsurpassed. * * * * Between the margin of the everglades and Biscayne Bay and Barnes Sound, there is a strip of land from three to fifteen miles in breadth. It is for the most part rocky pine land, and some portions have a considerable elevation above the level of the ocean. The deposits are oolitic and crystalline calcareous rock. In the vicinity of the bay the land is covered with an undergrowth of sago palm, called the coontie, probably from the Indian designation of the root. It yields an excellent article of starch, and also farina, which cannot be distinguished from Bermuda arrow root, except by the aid of the microscope. The soil is well adapted for the cultivation of sea island cotton, which is here perennial, and can be picked at almost all seasons of the year. Along the bay tobacco, equal to the best grown in Cuba, can be cultivated” (yielding from five to seven cuttings each year), “while every variety of tropical fruit can be grown successfully. The banana, plaintain, cocoanut, guava, sapadilla, pomegranate, mamma, tamarind, pine-apple, lime, lemon, and citron. Limes are so abundant in some places that they literally cover the ground. Grapes ripen in May. The finest varieties of fig are found in great abundance. The olive tree yields an oil equal to the best of Lucca. The castor oil plant is also very productive, and the Sisal hemp of commerce, from which the best of cordage is made, is wonderfully abundant. Sugar cane grows to a great height, and ratoons from seven to ten years. The tomato gets to be a stout bush, with hard, woody stalk, and bears continually. Biscayne Bay abounds with a great variety of fish, and is also the favorite haunt of the green turtle; it here finds an abundance of the peculiar seaweed it prefers and on which it thrives and fattens, and the water swarms with them. Key West offers a market for all that can be caught, and turtle catching, in this section, is a most lucrative employment. Sponges are very abundant, and a large trade is now carried on in Key West in this article. The sponges taken from these waters probably realize for the gatherers fifty to seventy-five thousand dollars per annum.” Northern persons, in going to this section, must leave behind them all their preconceived ideas as to soil, for they will find that the above-mentioned rocky pine lands are “_the very best_” for the cultivation of most of the tropical fruits, but the prairie lands, to use the language of Col. M. A. WILLIAMS (the State agent for the survey and location of the lands granted to the State by the general government), “are inconceivably rich, beyond description,” and are well adapted to the growth of the most exhausting crops of sugar cane and tobacco. L. D. STICKNEY, says in his pamphlet on Florida, “It is a great mistake to suppose