GEOGRAPHY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA 197

 influenced the precipitation through the vegetation or in some other way:*
 The summer rain falls mostly in the daytime, in the form of short, heavy showers.
 Hurricanes visit this section occasionally, usually in late summer, the season of maximum precipitation. But they rarely do much damage except near the coast, and even there they appear to be less frequent and destructive than they are a little farther north and south, though accurate statistics are not available. Tornadoes, popularly known as "cyclones," are almost unknown here, those being chiefly confined to those parts of the United States that have considerably more rain in early summer than in late summer.

 VEGETATION
 The vegetation of central Florida is even more diversified than the soil, and far more than in most areas of the same size, in the eastern United States. About thirty natural types are here recognized, and that number could possibly be doubled without undue duplication if one cared to go into such minute details. Just what constitutes a vegetation type is a disputed point. Some botanists have described armultitude of "plant associations," some of them consisting chiefly of a single species and occurring in strips or patches only a few feet wide; but in this work nothing less than several acres in extent is considered.
 Evei if there was no uncertainty about the size of the unit it would still be difficult to devise a satisfactory classification, for different types are related to each other in all sorts of ways, and two apparently quite different ones may be merely different stages of the same thing. In this work they will be taken up as nearly as possible in order of complexity, beginning with places that have no vegetation at all, and vegetation composed wholly of herbs, and proceeding. through shrubby types to dense forests made up of trees, shrubs, herbs, mosses, epiphytes, parasites, etc.

 *Some of the discrepancies in this respect observable in other parts of the table may be due to records too short to be accurate enough, or even to typographical or other errors. It seems a little strange, for example, that New Smyrna should have the lowest summer percentages and the highest late summer excess at the same time.