258 FLORIDA GEOLOGICAL SURVEY--I3TH ANNUAL REPORT

 AGRICULTURE

 CONDITIONS PREVIOUS TO 1887

 Although farming has long been one of the most important industries in central Florida, as in most other parts of the United States, it has had its greatest development only in the last few decades. In i85o, when the number and acreage of farms was first returned by the census, there were only about 6oo farms in our whole area, and over half of them were in Marion County, presumably in the hammock belt, which has the richest soil. Only a little over one per cent of the whole area was in farms, and one-fifth of that improved, making 2.66 improved acres per inhabitant, which would hardly be enough to feed the population if they depended entirely on field and garden crops for their sustenance. As there were no railroads in peninsular Florida then it is not likely that any appreciable quantity of food was imported, but fish and oysters contributed something to the larder of people living near the coast, and in the interior grazing cattle and hogs in the pine woods seems to have yielded more revenue than tilling the soil. Large plantations worked with slave labor, such as were common in other southern states, were almost unknown here, except for a few in the hammock belt north of Ocala.
 In the next ten years the number and average size of farms nearly doubled. Marion County still had the lion's share of the farm land and buildings, but considerably less than half the total number of farms and live-stock, showing that the farmers in other counties depended more on meat than on vegetables. The development of agriculture in central Florida as a whole from 1850 to 1880 is shown in Table 28, but the regions cannot very well be separated on account of the large size of the counties in those days, as already explained.
 The number of farms more than doubled between i86o and 1870, but their average size decreased, doubtless because the Civil War made many former slaves farm proprietors, and their holdings were naturally smaller than those of the whites. The amount of improved land fell off between 1870 and i88o, but outside of Marion County there was an increase, which would seem to indicate that the rich hammock lands were becoming impoverished