GEOGRAPHY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA 261

 The expenditure for fertilizers per acre was nearly twenty times as niuch as in 1879-80, and the results are shown in the increased population, improved land, and value of products. By this time the Middle Florida hammock belt had lost its leadership in every particular that the table shows (but doubtless still led in improved land percentage) and the most progressive farming was in the lake region and east coast strip.
 The report of the State census of 1895, although a little pamphlet of only 27 pages, and less than a third of that devoted to agriculture, gives some valuable information about conditions just after the freeze of February, 1895. (See chapter on climate.) This seems to be the first census to give the expenditures for farm labor (to which the value of board furnished laborers is added). As the expenditures and receipts are those for the year 1894, while the number and size of farms are as of the sunimer of 1895, when considerable acreage had been abandoned on account of the freeze, the expenditures and receipts per acre are somewhat exaggerated, as was clearly recognized at the time. But probably where a whole farm had been abandoned and there was no one to answer for it, its operations in 1894 were not counted at all, so that it did not affect the ratios per farm or per acre. The amount of improved land showed an increase over that of 1890, in spite of the calamity.
 There are some omissions and inconsistencies in the returns (perhaps mostly the fault of the printers), so that it is hardly worth while to give statistics for separate regions. The next table therefore gives only the results for central Florida, the rest of the State, and the whole State. As far as statistics per farm are concerned the rest of the State is practically the northern third; but the vast uninhabited areas of South Florida of course affect the percentage of farn land and improved land.
 If labor and fertilizers were the only expenses, and every farm occupied by only one family, it would appear that the difference between expenses and receipts, or the value of the labor of the average farm family in a year, was about $546 in central Florida and $553 in the rest of the State; but if we had all the facts central Florida should rank higher in this respect than the rest of the