PRELIMINARY REPORT ON PEAT.21

PEAT IN FLORIDA.
Conditions in Florida are almost ideal for the formation of peat. The topography of the state is decidedly immature, there being very few evidences of recent surface erosion, especially on the peninsula. There are many times more lakes in Florida than in all other coastal plain states combined, and most of these lakes, quite unlike those of the glaciated region, seem to have been formed by the solution of underlying limestone (never by the clamming tip of streams by drift), and have no stream-s carrying sediment into them. Most of the streams carry no appreciable quantity of sediment, anyway, and there is only one river in the State which is very muddy all the time. The very long coast line (considerably over iooo miles in length), and the general flatness of the country near the coast, favor the development of estuaries. The St. Johns River, for instance, is an estuary for a distance of about ioo miles from its month.
IThe soil being mostly sand, very little of the rain runs off as it falls; most of it soaking into the ground immediately, to reappear gradually in swamps in the lowlands, or in large springs in the more calcareous portions of the state. For this reason the streams which rise. within the state, do not fluctuate much, and are consequently bordered by peat deposits in many places.
Finally, the rainfall is ample, and so distributed through the seasons that most of it falls during the warmest months, thus balancing the evaporation to a considerable extent. To illustrate this point, the statistics of the average monthly and annual tempera, ture and rainfall at' Eustis, Lake County, are subjoined. Eustis is near the geographical center of the State, and the figures for it are probably as typical for the whole Sta-te as those of any other one station which might be selected. The following statistics, covering a periodof 13 years, f rom 1890 to T903, are taken from Bulletin Q of the U. S. Weather Bureau, published in 1906.

It will be noticed that over half the total rainfall comes in the. four warmest months, June to September. This is approximately true throughout Florida, and in 'many other parts of the eastern United States where pine forests prevail.

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