GEOGRAPHY AND VEGETATION OF NORTHERN 



FLORIDA. 



Scope of the REroRT. 



The territory covered by this report is that part of Florida 

 north of the southern boundaries of Lafayette, Alachua, Putnam 

 and St. Johns Counties, an area of about 22,600 square miles. With- 

 in this area there is so much diversity of geographical conditions 

 that any attempt to treat it as a unit, as is commonly done with 

 whole states or countries in encyclopedias and school geographies, 

 would be very unsatisfactorv as well as unscientific. The wants of 

 some readers would be best serv'ed by describing each county sepa- 

 rately, but that would be equally unscientific, and would involve too 

 much repetition. But the area can be divided into natural geo- 

 graphical division.^, which are almost as numerous as counties, and 

 therefore average but little larger ; and as each division is essentially 

 homogeneous throughout, speaking in a general way, a description 

 of the country by regions has decided advantages over any other 

 plan. 



A classification of geographical divisions for the whole state 

 was given in the Third Annual Report of the State Geological Sur- 

 vey four years ago. The northern part is now subdivided somewhat 

 more minutely and probably more accurately than was done at that 

 time, and the salient characters of each region are described sepa- 

 rately, with special emphasis on the vegetation, for reasons explained 

 elsewhere. Although the writer has been in every county and 

 traversed nearly every mile of railroad in northern Florida more 

 than once, and has re-visited everv" division herein described during 

 the present vea'r. it has of course been out of the question to ex- 

 plore everv township in the few vears available ; and previous pub- 

 lications contain verv little information about the sections not yet 

 A^sited. which are mostly remote from railroads. For this and 

 other obvious reasons the regional descriptions are necessarily very 

 generalized : and it has not been possible to make allowance for 

 many exceptions, such as hills in some of the flattest regions, fertile 

 spots in some of the poorest regions, etc. Likewise features which 

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