GEOGRAPHY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA 173

way through it. The prevailing color is cream or light buff, except that the, uppermost inch or two is usually bleached a little by the action of vegetation. In cuts and pits where the whole thickness of the sand is exposed it rests sometimes on sandy clay and sometimes on phosphate rock or silicified limestone, the latter sometimes protruding a few inches above the surface in boulder-like outcrops without making any perceptible difference in the vegetation.*
 Salamanders abound and gophers, ants, and sundry other burrowing animals are common in this type of soil, so that practically every particle of it within a foot or two of the surface must be. turned over by them every few years, and this may be a sufficient explanation of its homogeneity.
 The vegetation is nearly always of the high pine land type. Although the soil looks very unpromising to one accustomed to clayey soils, it is very easily cultivated, and when properly fertilized yields very satisfactory returns. Practically all the farming in the limesink region, and most of the orange groves in the lake region, are on this kind of soil.
 Cream-colored sand with humius. Where the soil just described is protected from fire by being partly surrounded by bodies of water or hammocks (see chapter on vegetation), the. forests become much denser (sandy hammocks), and some humus accumulates, making the top soil gray. This phase has been mapped as "Norfolk sand," "Norfolk fine sand," and "Leon sand, hammock phase;" and it is represented by mechanical analyses 41 and 42 and chemical analyses C and Q. SAlamanders seem to be absent and other subterranean animals scarce, so that the soil is more leached than the typical phase; and comparatively little of it is cultivated.
 Brown, rusty, and ashy sand. In many places, for example around Dade City, Brandon, Mount Dora, Montverde, and between Bartow and Fort Meade, the loose sand of the uplands is brownish instead of cream-colored. Mechanical analyses 29 and 30 and chemical analysis H, all from near Fort Meade, probably represent this type. In the vicinity of Fort Meade, where the soil is decidedly

 *There is some di-fference of opinion as to whether this sand is a distinct formation or a residual material from the underlying Tertiary strata, as stated in the chapter on stratigraphy; but from the geographical standpoint that is a matter of little consequence.