GEOGRAPHY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA 221

oranges and vegetables in, and into crude barrels for fish or rosin, or hewed into cross-ties without ever going through a mill. Long-leaf pine is still the principal fuel in the rural distrlicts and smaller towns, and especially at ice factories and electric light plants. A generation ago it was used on nearly all locomotives in Florida, but that custom is now almost obsolete except on a few branch lines* and logging railroads.
 Cypress of both species is used largely for shingles, poles, piles, and cross-ties. Within the. last few weeks a company owning a body of cypress (presumably pond cypress) near Cow Creek in Volusia County has advertised for ioo laborers to cut ties, the supply of timber being estimated to last five years. Cedar is or has been cut for pencil wood, mostly in the Gulf hammock region. There were cedar mills at Cedar Keys and Webster forty or more years ago, and more recently there has been a large mill at Crystal River and a small one at Rosewood.
 Rail fences, chiefly of pine, can still be seen in some of the older settled regions, particularly the two hammock belts, but wire fences (with posts usually of pine) are much more common at present. Another important by-product of the long-leaf pine is pine straw, used for road-surfacing material in high pine land where the sand is deep and clay and rock not easily accessible, mostly in the lake region. A few years ago a pine-straw road could be constructed for about $40 a mile, but the straw has to be renewed every few years.
 The terminal buds of the cabbage palmetto have been used more or less for food, and they yield a coarse fiber which is made into brushes, brooms, etc., at Cedar Keys and perhaps elsewhere. Two carloads of them are said to have been shipped north from Titusville recently to be used for ceremonial purposes on Palm Sunday. But to destroy a whole tree just for a few ounces of food or fiber is a rather wasteful practice. Its leaves are often used to make thatch roofs on fishermen's shacks and other more or less temporary structures. The hardwoods are little used as yet, except for fuel.
 *In April, 1920, the writer traveled from Tampa to Tarpon Springs behind a wood-burning engine. In the last few years the Florida East Coast Railway has run its engines with crude oil, which is almost as accessible to Florida as coal-is, and incidentally less annoying to passengers.