76 FLORIDA GEOLOGICAL SURVEY-I3TH ANNUAL REPORT

make rather dry reading, but besides their brevity, they. have the great advantage of eliminating personal opinions, which have been rather too prominent in much that has been written about Florida heretofore. The source of most of our statistics is the state and federal censuses, and these of course are not and never can be absolutely accurate, but their errors (except in completeness of enumeration) are just about as likely to be in one direction as another, thus balancing each other to a considerable extent when suf ficiently large numbers are used. And as they represent the work of a multitude of enumerators, no individual investigator can hope to approach them in completeness, or to detect errors (other than typographical, etc.) in them by merely going over the same ground once or twice.
 The aim of this report is to answer as many as is possible in 200 pages Or so of the questions that a prospective settler or investor might ask. Thei-e is already a vast amount of literature about this and other parts of Florida, in books and magazines and in handsomely illustrated circulars issued by boards of trade, railroads. real estate companies, etc., but most of that is devoted to some limited area, which is usually painted in the most glowing colors, so: that it may not help the reader much in getting at the whole truth. Every region on earth has its advantages and disadvantages, and the well-nigh universal policy of minimizing or ignoring the latter in the. effort to attract settlers is rather short-sighted, for if a newcomer finds conditions too different from what he had been led to expect he is liable to give up in despair and give the region a bad name.
 The information in scientific works, soil surveys, census reports, etc., is much more likely to be accurate and impartial than that designed merely to entertain the reading public, increase the business of railroads, etc., but it is relatively inaccessible, and not easy for the average unscientific person to digest and interpret. And in spite of all that has been published about Florida, it would be difficult to find in previous works any definite statement about the prevailiny soil types, commonest plants, density of population, percentage of illiteracy, leading religious denominations and foreign nationalities, percentage of white and colored farmers, owners and tenants, average size 6f farms, value of farm land and buildings,'number of Rnimals of various kinds per farm, cost of labor and fertilizers. leading crops and average yield of each. etc., for any of the regions