8o FLORIDA GEOLOGICAL SURVEY I3TH ANNUAL REPORT 



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There is doubtless much room for improvement in the treatment 

 of common names, for the writer does not often stop long enough 

 in one place to interrogate the residents about the names they use for 

 wild plants. Such names enclosed in parentheses are either general 

 terms like grass and fern, or names used in Georgia or farther north, 

 which may or may not be in common use in central Florida. But 

 as a large proportion of the inhabitants of this area came from other 

 states, and some who will read this report are now living in other 

 states, these names ought to be more intelligible than they would 

 be in a region which has had very little immigration. 



Statistics of population are taken from census reports, prin- 

 cipally the U. S. census of 1910. It would have been interesting to 

 carry the investigation back to 1830, when Florida first figured in 

 census returns, but previous to 1887 ^^^ counties in central Florida 

 were so few and large that it would be difficult to get an adecjuatt 

 representation of any one region from county statistics. However, 

 some figures illustrating the growth and composition of the popula- 

 tion in the whole area in the early days are given in the general 

 discussion. Quite a number of additional data are taken from the 

 state census of 191 5, which however does not go into as much detail 

 as the government censuses, and is not so free from typographical 

 errors. At this writing the only returns of population from the 

 U. S. census of 1920 available are the total population of all the 

 counties and some of the cities and tovrns, but those have been used 

 as far as they go. (It will probably be several months yet before a 

 full analysis of the 1920 population by race, nativity, etc., is ob- 

 tainable.) 



The 191*0 census is also the main source of statistical information 

 about agricultural conditions, though others, as far back as 1850. 

 have been utilized as far as possible. The state agricultural depart- 

 ment took censuses of agriculture in connection with population in 

 1895 and 1905. and in recent years has taken censuses of crops, 

 livestock, etc., at biennial intervals. These biennial enumerations 

 subdivide the crops more minutely than the government censuses 

 (which lump together most kinds of vegetables') ever did, and 

 indicate the value of each crop in each county, but give little or no 

 information about the number and size of farms, color and tenure 

 o^ farmers, -value of land, buildings and other propertv. and expen- 

 ditures for labor, feed, fertilizers, etc. A\''orse still, thev are marred 

 bv so many clerical or tyoographical errors that they have to be 



