GENERAL FEATURES 



Under this head the various geographical features of central 

 Florida will be discussed by topics, and each subdivided by regions 

 as far as is possible or desirable. This naturally involves some re- 

 iteration of facts already brought out in the regional descriptions, 

 but the two treatments supplement each other just as the ground 

 plan and elevation of a building do, and this second part is best 

 adapted to illustrating general principles. It will also be useful 

 to persons who are interested primarily in one thing, such as min- 

 eral resources, water, soil, climate, timber, population or agricul- 

 ture, and do not care to look through ten regional descriptions to 

 pick out the desired information. 



The treatment begins with the structure of the earth's crust, 

 which as far as we know has not changed materially for ages, and 

 proceeds to topography, which changes a little more rapidly — 

 though almost imperceptibly in a human lifetime — to soil and cli- 

 mate, to vegetation — which is changing slowly all the time even 

 where man does not interfere with it — and finally to such very 

 changeable features as population and agriculture. Soil, which is 

 the top of the earth's crust, might perhaps most logically be treated 

 immediately after sfratigraphy, but in the area under consider ation 

 its character seems to depend as much on topography as on the na- 

 ture of the underlying rocks, so topography is taken up first. 



A complete account would treat every topic historically as well 

 as geographically ; but the changes in stratigraphy, soil, topography 

 and climate are so slow, and exact information about them so mea- 

 ger, that it is hardly worth while to speculate about them at all in 

 a work of this kind. Vegetation changes more rapidly, and in the 

 last 25 years there have been published hundreds of pages ovi the 

 supposed trends of development, or "succession," of vegetation in 

 various parts of the country, particularly the Middle West. But 

 in this report vegetation -is regarded as essentiall}'' static, except 

 for the depredations of civilized man and some comparatively short 

 cycles of succession after fire in pine lands, scrub, hammocks, etc., 

 which will be alluded to at the proper places. 



Population and agriculture have developed from almost nothing 

 to their present stage in less than 100 years, and we have abundant 



154 



