274 FLORIDA GEOLOGICAL SURVEY-I3TH ANNUAL REPORT

 VARIATIONS IN SIZE OF FARMS
 All the foregoing agricultural statistics are based on average farms, and tell nothing about how many are below and above the average or how far some may depart from the average. News items about wonderful yields of one crop or another abound in local papers, and the census averages seems so small in comparison with some of -these reports as to tend to give the impression that they may be inaccurate or unfair ; but it must be borne in mind that it is only exceptional happenings that have much news value, and the doings of the niultitudes of farmers (or any other class of people) who rank near or below the average are not likely to be mentioned often.
 The U. S. census gives for every state and county, and in many cases for white and colored farmers separately, the number of farms in several different size groups, from which curves can be constructed showing the range of variation in that particular in any county or group of counties. For 1860 and 1870 the grouping was based on improved acreage, but since then on total acreage, which in most parts of Florida and other "piney woods' sections is much less significant than improved acreage, for the greater part of the farm area in this State consists of wild land which does not differ perceptibly from neighboring land that has never been appropriated by farmers.
 For this reason, and also because the census does not give statistics of this kind for the two races separately for counties that have less than ioo negro farmers, no size-of-farm curves are presented here,* but some have been drawn for office use, and some of their interesting features may be mentioned briefly.
 At all times and in all countries, as far as known, there are more farms below than above the average size, just as most people are below the average in age, education, wealth etc., as explained at the beginning of the chapter on illiteracy. In 1910 both in central Florida and the whole State just about 23-.5% of the white farmers had farms above the average in size, while among .the
 *For a series of such curves for southern Alabama, perhaps the only ones of the kind ever published, see Geol. Surv. Ala., Special Report No. II, p. 131, August, 1920.