282 FLORIDA GEOLOGICAL SURVEY SIXTH ANNUAL REPORT. 



Ants and salamanders are common in this soil, and gophers, 

 moles, doodle-bugs and other subterranean animals occasional. 



Topography and Hydrography — The topography is mostly 

 gently undulating, a little hilly in some places and nearly flat in 

 others, and pitted with numerous basin-like depressions.* The 

 records of the G., F. & A. Ry. give the altitude of Spring Hill as 

 169 feet and Hilliardville (Benhaden P. O.) as 142; but whether 

 these figures refer to sea-level or some assumed datum is not 

 known. Springs are unknown, or at least very scarce, and 

 streams are not common, but there are a few sluggish sloughs 

 and drains, and many ponds and lakes. These bodies of water 

 vary in size from an acre or so to several hundred acres. Some 

 of the smaller ponds are shallow enough to be diy a large part of 

 the time, while others are permanent. The seasonal fluctuation 

 of the water in different ponds seems to vary from about two to 

 ten feet; and some of those which fluctuate the most are con- 

 nected with sink-holes. As the slopes are usually very gentle, 

 some of the ponds have considerable areas around them which are 

 sometimes inundated and sometimes exposed. The water in both 

 ponds and streams is neither muddy nor calcareous, but coffee- 

 colored from dissolved and suspended vegetable matter. 



Vegetation Types — The prevailing upland vegetation is very 

 open forests of rather small long-leaf pines, with a comparatively 

 dense "lower story" of small black-jack and turkey oaks, usually 

 not over 15 feet tall and often shrub-like, and a herbaceous under- 

 growth which does not cover the ground completely, but exposes 

 some of the sand to the sun. There are, however, few bare spaces 

 large enough to afiford much protection from the fires which sweep 

 through this as other long-leaf pine regions, so that plants (such 

 as annual herbs and thin-barked shrubs) which cannot stand fre- 

 quent fires are chiefly coniined to railroads, fields and other clear- 

 ings, or to hammocks and swamps. Within a few miles of the 

 county line, where the ground-water is nearer the surface than 

 the average, the oaks are almost wanting and the pines and 

 herbage grow more densely. 



The areas between high and low water marks around the 



*This sort of topography is commonly supposed to indicate solution 

 rather than erosion, but it is possible that the wind has had something 

 to do with it too, for circular basins occur among the old dunejs of the 

 West Florida coast, where solution seems to be out of the question, as 

 already pointed out. 



