PRELIMINARY REPORT ON PEAT.

shaped depressions a few acres in extent, which hold water long enough for a little peat to form.
Analyses of peat from this region will be found in the table of analyses, under localities numbered 2, 2o and 42.
LIME-SINK REGION.
This extends from a few miles north of the middle of the straight line which divides Georgia from Florida, southward to Hernando County at least, with disconnected areas in Leon and Marion Counties. South of Hernando County lit seems to pass gradually into the South Florida flatwoods (described farther on). Typically it is a region of rolling sandy pine woods, with very little underbrush, with many approximately circular depressions or sinks, and very few streams or well-defined valleys. In the northern portion most of the depressions are perfectly dry, but farther south, where the altitude is less, some of them dip below the groundwater level and contain ponds or lakes. Near the few rivers which traverse the region large limestone springs are rather common.
Clay seems to be absent from' a large part of the lime-sink region, especially southward; and neither the sand nor the limestone offers much hindrance to the passage of water, which explains why most of the drainage is subterranean, and water is not seen at any considerable elevation above sea-level. This region is of interest geologically as containing all the hard-rock phosphate deposits in Florida which have been worked up to the present time.
In a country with so little surface water, peat is of course scarce. Some samples collected near Inverness and Istachatta (localities I6 and I7) might be regarded as belonging to this region, though they are very close to the edge of another region which will be described below.
MIDDLE FLORIDA FLATWOODS.
(PLATE 23.2)
Under this name are mapped three disconnected areas, all lying within 35 miles of the Gulf coast, north of latitude 290. This can be described briefly asg a region of flat pine woods, with shallow ponds, most of which contain a dense growth of trees and shrubs, making a type of topography and vegetation commonly known as "bays." (San Pedro Bay, a very large bay or aggregation of bays, in Madison, Taylor and Lafayette Counties, popularly supposed to be impenetrable, is in the very heart of this region.) There are a few sluggish streams, most of them hardly

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