PRELIMINARY REPORT ON PEAT.

SWAMP WAITER.
The water of most streams, lakes, ponds, swamps and fresh marshes in Florida, as in the coastal plain generally (and to a considerable extent in the glaciated region as well), contains organic matter both in suspension and solution, which gives it a brownish color. Such water in a glass looks like very weak coffee, or in a deep stream or lake, especially if the bottom is dark, like strong coffee, or it may even be compared in blackness to ink. Some of the dissolved organic matter is of the nature of vegetable acids, and this kind of water always has an acid reaction, and it is often perceptibly sour to the taste.
SWAMP WATER ON CALCAREOUS SOIL.
CREEK SWAMPS ETC.
Although most coffee-colored streams flow over beds of sand, there are many places in Florida where such streams have limestone or marl near enough to the surface to have a decided effect on the vegetation without the limestone itself being visible. Such places are usually in small streams with shallow swamps, and are of no importance as sources of peat, but they are of scientific interest because to any one not a botanist they would hardly seem to differ from strictly non-calcareous swamps. Moreover, they might be of some assistance to a geologist in helping him to locate beds of limestone or marl in regions where outcrops are scarce, as in the East Florida flatwoods.
These swamps with invisible calcareous foundations are rather common within a few miles of the St. Johns River and southwest of Kissimmee, where I have seen many of them while traveling by rail, but I have been in very few of them. The following list is made up from observations in Jefferson, Duval and Clay Counties, and about the head-waters of Peace River in Polk County.
TREES
Taxodium distichum (cypress) Quercus nigra (water oak)
Acer rubrum (maple) Persea pubescens?
Fraxinus prGfunda? (ash) Persea Borbnia (red bay)
Nyssa biflora (black gum) Fraxinus Caroliniana (ash)
Ihex Cassine (swamp holly) Juniperus Virginiana (cedar)
Liquidambcr Sty,-aciflua (sweet gum) Pinus Taeda (short-leaf pine)
Quercus sp. (similar to Q nigrz. Ulmus Americana? (elm)
hut with narrower leaves) Carpinus Caroliniana (ironwood)

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