PRELIMINARY REPORT ON PEAT.

same as if there was a barrier beach a few miles out. This whole coast is bordered by marshes a mile or two in width.
For a flat and calcareous region, this contains considerable peat, around lakes,' rivers and estuaries. Descriptions of two of the interesting peat localities of this region (Hog Island and Panasoffkee) and analyses of peat from one of them, will be found in subsequent pages.
LAKE REGION.
(PLATES 9, 12, 24-26, 27.1. FIGS. 20, 23, 26)
This is peculiar to Florida, and occupies the "backbone" of the peninsula for a distance of some 200 miles, with a maximum width of about 5o miles in the latitude of Leesburg and Sanford. Its topography is much like that of the lime-sink region on a large scale. There are plenty of rounded hills and depressions, sometimes giving differences of elevation of over IOO feet within half a mile, but very few streams or valleys. Near the center -of the region, particularly in the southern part of Lake County, some of the hills probably rise to a little over 200 feet above sea-level.*
The depressions are nearly all occupied by permanent lakes, of which there are many thousands in the region, varying in size from a few acres to over 5o square miles, and presumably deeper in,,proporfion to area than those in most other parts of the state. The smaller ones are generally nearly circular, but the larger ones are more irregular in outline, as can be seen from a good map.
The surface is nearly everywhere sand, underlaid at a depth of several feet by a pinkish or mottled clay, which in some places is pure enough to be an important source of kaolin, and in others is gritty, and makes an excellent road-surfacing material. Limestone or marl is seen in only a few places, such as around springs and at certain points on the St. Johns River; but the vegetation of most of the low hammocks (which are usually found in the neighborhood of the larger lakes) seems to indicate that there is some calcareous material not far from the surface in such places. The topography is probably due at least in part to the dissolving away of limestone long ago, though there are doubtless other factors connected with it which are not so well understood.
*Elevatic!us of four or five hundred feet have been claimed for points in Lake County by seemingly reliable people, but these estimateR are probably not based on actual measureme-ts. No topographic map of any part of thisoregion has ever been published, r' far as known to the writer.

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