GEOGRAPHY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA 161

evated portions, as in most other parts of the world. As far as we know at present the highest point in Florida is the summit of Iron Mountain, about two miles 'north of Lake Wales, in Polk County, which is said to be 324.3 feet above sea-level.* There are some very similar high steep hills in the southern part of Lake County, particularly between West Apopka and Clermont. Clermont is 105 feet above sea-level, and some, of the hills northeast of there must be 150 if not 200 feet higher; and from at least one of them one can look directly westward ove.r three lakes at once. Col. Charles Ledyard Norton, in his Handbook of Florida (3d edition, 1891, pp. 45, 274), referring to Lake County, says: "In point of fact, the highest elevations in the State, nearly five hundred feet above tide-water, are found in this. county;" but in the light of present knowledge that appears to be considerably exaggerated.
 The high hills of the Hernando hammock belt have been noted in the description of that region; and'there are points in the limesink region and Middle Florida hammock belt nearly if not quite 200 feet above sea-level. The, Hernando hills commonly have clay near the surface, at least on their slopes (fig. 15), and Iron Mountain and some of the hills near Ocala are a little rocky on top, but those of Lake County and many others have summits and slopes alike covered with deep sand. Some of these sandy slopes are remarkably steep, about 30', but the outlines of the hills are smooth and rounded, as if the wind slowly and imperceptibly filled up with

 *Early in 1915 the corporation owning this "mountain" and considerable adjoining land advertised it to be 385 feet high, but this seems to have been based on an erroneous assumption as to the altitude of points on the recently completed branch of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, which passed a little west of the 'property. Revised figures seem to have been obtained from the railroad a little later, and in the summer of the same year the corporation published a small topographic map of the property, giving 324.3 feet as the altitude of the summit, which seems reasonable. This was soon accepted by the U. S. Geolorical Survey as the highest point in the State, and so published in the annual New York World Almanac, beginning with the issue for 1917 (p. 67). About the same time, however, it became known that Iron Mountain has a close rival in a point near Round Lake in West Florida, 322 feet above sea-level. (See our iith Annual Report, 1918, p. 81, and 12th, p. 53.) tSee E. A. Smith, Tenth Census U. S. 6:237. 1884; N. S. Shaler, Bull. Mus. Comp. Zool. Harvard Coll. 16:151. 1890; Harper, Torreya 11:65. 1911; and fig. 19 of the present report.