II. TALLAHASSEE RED HILLS. 267 



Florida. Where the phosphatic rock approaches the surface the soil 

 is browner than usual. 



The prevailing surface loam looks much like the Lafayette (?) 

 red loam of the older parts of the coastal plain, but it is not quite 

 such a brilliant red, and it is evidently different in chemical compo- 

 sition. On shaded banks along roads the earth is commonly en- 

 crusted with a minute gray-green lichen, rarely seen elsewhere, and 

 the sides of railroad cuts become clothed with grass and other veg- 

 etation much more quickly than in other parts of the South; all of 

 which seems to point to some special element of fertility in the soil. 



The surface loam is usually over three-fourths sand, and very 

 pervious to water, and yet there is enough clay in the red soils to 

 make vertical banks retain their shape for years. The proportion of 

 sand is greatest in level areas, both uplands and lowlands. Gullies 

 are almost unknown, except alongside of roads on steep grades, and 

 furrows in the fields usually run pretty straight in almost any direc- 

 tion regardless of the topography, instead of being carefully leveled 

 and terraced as they are in the superficially similar red hills of South 

 Georgia. Most of this soil has just about the right proportions of 

 sand and clay to make good roads, and there is probably no part of 

 Florida where the natural or unimproved roads are better in both 

 wet and dry weather than they are here. 



The following mechanical analyses of three characteristic up- 

 land soils of this region, with their subsoils, have been taken from 

 the government soil survey of Leon County, published in 1906. 

 Each represents the average of two or more samples from different 

 localities, but neither the localities nor the depths are given in the 

 report. 



I. "Orangeburg* fine sandy loam." This is a "brown, reddish, or 

 yellow medium to fine sandy loam, from 4 to 15 inches deep," with a sub- 

 soil of "red sandy clay to a depth of 36 inches and usually (much deeper;" 

 but both soil and subsoil vary considerably from the average- This soil 



*The name "Orangeburg" for a series of soils seems to have been first 

 used by the U. S. Bureau of Soils in connection with Darlington County, 

 South Carolina, and Perry County, Alabama, surveyed in 1902, though it is 

 probably derived from Orangeburg (city and county), S. C, surveyed 

 two years later. Most of the soi's thus designated are red loams of 

 the Lafayette formation, widely distributed in the more elevated parts 

 of the coastal plain from North Carolina to Texas. The red soil around 

 Tallahassee differs notably from the typical "Orangeburg" in not being 

 easily gullied, as above stated, and in the high percentage of phosphorus, 

 indicated below, if not in other ways. 



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