310 FLORIDA GEOLOGICAL SURVEY-THIRD ANNUAL REPORT.
PEAT AS AN AGRICULTURAL SOIL.
The question of the utilization of peat or muck as a soil to grow crops in belongs to an agricultural rather than to a geological report, and will not be gone into very deeply here. It has been discussed repeatedly in many experiment station bulletins and similar publications which the interested reader can easily find; and I will only undertake to point out a few of the fundamental principles.
Excellent crops have undoubtedly been grown on peat in many parts of the world, but there have also been many failures, due to imperfect understanding of the conditions, which are very different from those of true or mineral soils. Any one undertaking developments of this kind without previous experience would therefore do well to proceed cautiously.
Many people seem to think that an extensive peat deposit, consisting as it does of vegetable debris which has been accumulating for centuries, should make a wonderfully fertile soil when drained; and as such places are often treeless, the expense of clearing, an important item in some fertile soils, is done away with from the start. In Florida,' attention has recently been focused upon the Everglades as a possible addition to the agricultural area of the State, partly because of its enormous extent and unique and more or less mysterious character, and partly because it is situated in a latitude almost free from frost.
Considering the last point first, a tropical climate is by no means essential to successful agriculture. If it was, the farmers in temperate regions could not compete with those in the tropics, and northern Florida would be inhabited only by lumber and turpentine men, stockmen, phosphate miners, etc. As it is, every climate has its advantages and disadvantages, and where there is no frost, weeds, insects, and other pests have a much better show than in cooler climates.
Again, peat, unlike humus or ordinary soil, contains very little plant food. Its nitrogen is largely inert, as already explained, and it is usually sour and very deficient in other ingredients which nearly all crops need, cuch as lime, phosphoric acid, and potash. The natural fertility of a soil (i. e., without fertilizers) is indicated by the native vegetation better than anything else, as Dr. Hilgard* has repeatedly pointed out, and the vegetation growing on peat is nearly always of a character signifying acidity and sterility of soil.
The early settlers of the eastern United States quickly selected and appropriated the richest soils, which they located with unerring
* See bibliography.