GEOGRAPHY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA I I I

 6. THE HERNANDO HAMMOCK BELT
 (Figs. 15-17. Soil analyses V, W.)
 In the Third Annual Report this was treated as an outlier of the Middle Florida hammock belt, but it differs from the southern extension of that in Marion County in being much less calcareous and more hilly, and in the entire absence of red oak (the commonest hardwood tree around Ocala), and it seems to merit separate treatment. It occupies high land about equally distant from the Withlacoochee River and the Gulf coast, as if it was an erosion remnant left by the deepening of the valley of that river in pre-historic times. The portions immediately north and south of Brooksville have been called Annuttalaga and Choocochattee. hammocks respectively, but they are considerably larger and more diversified than typical hammocks. The area of the belt is about 200 square miles.
 Geology and Topography. The Chattahoochee formation, an impure limestone of Oligocene. age, is exposed around Brooksville, and may underlie the. whole area. It is pretty well covered up, though, by clay (utilized for brick-making at Brooksville) and sand. The topography is decidedly hilly, for Florida. Some of the hills are among the highest in the state, though no reliable measurements of them are available yet. The Atlantic Coast Line depot at Brooksville is said to be 126 feet above sea-level, and the business portion of the. town must be about 100 feet higher, and other elevations near by may be. still higher. Blanton, in Pasco County, has an altitude of io6 feet by the railroad survey, and some of the hills a few miles northwest of there the writer would judge from walking over them to be nearly 200 feet higher. Mirror Lake, near the abandoned station of Lenard, a few miles northeast of Blanton, was claimed in an advertisement a few years ago to be 330 feet above sea-le.vel; but the altitude of Lenard is given as Irg feet, and the lake does not appear to be much higher than that, probably not over 50 feet higher.
 On account of the calcareous nature of the country rock, and the still purer limestone of older formations below it, much of the drainage is subterranean. There are a number of lime-sinks, the best known of which is the Devil's Punchbowl, in the woods a few miles northwest of Brooksville, a conical depression perhaps ioo feet in diameter and 50 feet deep.' Apparently no streams from