PRELIMINARY REPORT ON PEAT.

STAGNANT WATER.
Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as stagnant water in Florida, for the water in the ground is slowly but constantly circulating, and that in ponds and lakes of course still more so. But the term stagnant is here applied! to all water (not already provided for in the foregoing pages) which has no perceptible current; and this includes all the lakes, even those which are parts of the Ocklawaha and St. Johns River systems and have considerable streams issuing from them.
Lakes and ponds may be either evanescent (intermittent) or permanent. The most conspicuous examples of the former type are the large shallow lakes of the Middle Florida hammock belt. Most of these are flat-bottomed, with sink-holes at or near their edges. which keep them drained most of the time.* Even where there are no well-defined sinks the shallowness of such lakes permits them to dry out between rainy seasons. All such places have been favorite pastures for cattle ever since the country was first settled, and this kind of treatment has brought in so many weeds (especially dog-fennel, Eupatorium capillifolium, and a grass, Anastrophus paspaloides) and damaged the original vegetation so much that it would be a very difficult matter to reconstruct it now.
Some of these shallow lakes, or prairies as the driest ones are called, contain small saucer-like depressions a foot or more below the general surface, and these may retain water long enough to allow some peat to form, as already stated in the description of the Middle Florida hammock belt. Some small lakes and ponds with concave bottoms, mostly in this same hammock belt or in the limesink region, also contain a little peat, but it is usually very shallow and mixed with a good deal of sand.
In many places on the peninsula, especially in flat pine woods where limestone is near the surface, from about Sumter County southward, there are prairies not connected with sinks or streams, varying in size from, a few acres to several thousand acres. These are nearly flat, depressed a few inches below the surrounding pine woods, and flooded in the wet season. The smaller ones are commonly circular or nearly so. These prairies are very characteristic of South Florida, and probably have no counterpart anywhere else. Except for the Everglades, which might be regarded as a very large prairie (and will be described farther on), they contain little or no peat; and they are scattered over such a wide territory.
*This type of lake basin has been pretty fully discussed by Dr, Sellards in a preceding paper of this volume (pages 43-75)-

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