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Abstract (Heinselman, 1963, 1970; Hofstetter, 1999), and the Seney region of Mitchigan (Heinselman, 1965). The origin of these features has never been satisfactorily explained, and workers have concentrated on regictlal descriptions rather than on a continental awareness and comparison of these biophysiographic features. The objective of tbis study was to survey similarities and differences between islands in northern and southern regions of the contineht, largely from the .. literature, but also from the. experience of the authors, in the hope of shedding light on their genesis and the factors controlling their development. This study includes a compa~ison of morphology, vegetation, and stratigraphy of the peats underlying the islands. The islands that were investigated here were those located on uniformly deep peats in northern minnesota, the northern Florida Everglades, and the Okefenokee Swamp of Georgia. This study did not consider islands associated with the shallow peats (less than 1.5 CD) or sinkhole peats'in the soufhern Everglades.