170 FLORIDA GEOLOGICAL SURVEY I3TH ANNUAL REPORT 



Most streams in our area are too short or too near sea-level to 

 fluctuate much with the seasons, and besides the excess of rainfall 

 in late summer (see chapter on climate, farther on) tends to coun- 

 terbalance evaporation and thus keep their flow uniform, so tha? 

 floods are practically unknown. The St. John's River, the largest, 

 is unique in several ways. It rises in great marshes or wet prairies, 

 resembling the Everglades, near the southern edge of Brevard 

 County, within 25 miles of the ocean in a direct line and not ovei 

 20 feet above it at low water, and flows northward approximately 

 parallel to the coast for over 200 miles, with a fall of only aboul 

 an inch to the mile. In the latitudes under consideration it is much 

 narrower than it is where influenced by the tide, except where it 

 expands into lakes. Lake JMonroe, between Sanford and Enter- 

 prise, is said to be five feet above sea-level, with a maximum depth 

 (at low water?) of only eight feet. Between there and Lake Har- 

 ney, the next lake above, the river is said to have ari extreme fluc- 

 tuation of seven feet, which is perhaps the greatest of an}^ stream ii? 

 central Florida, unless it is exceeded by the Peace or the Alafia 

 River; but that of course is very little compared with some of the 

 rivers farther north. 



The Ocklawaha* and Withlacoochee Rivers resemble the St. 

 John's in flowing northward most of their length, a phenomenon 

 that deserves more attention from physiographers than it has re- 

 ceived. 



SOILS 



The soils of central Florida, although prevailingly sandy, are 

 considerably diversified within certain limits. Alluvial and red 

 clayey soils are scarce, but we have soils ranging in chemical com- 

 position from nearly pure calcium carbonate and highly phosphatic 

 to nearly pure silica and peat. 



The correlations between soil and vegetation in this part of the 

 country are so close, and the natural vegetation nearly everywhere 

 so prominent, that most previous attempts to classify Florida soil? 



*In recent years this has often been spelled "Oklawaha," presumably by the 

 same sort of people who write "Suwanee' for Suwannee, "Hillsboro" for Hills- 

 borough, "Okechobee" for Okeechobee, etc., but this should especially be dis- 

 couraged, for it tends to give an erroneous impression of the first sjdlable. 

 (For the benefit of strangers it might be well to explain that the main ac- 

 cent is on the third syllable. Also that Kissimmee is accented in the middle.) 



