5- HOLMES VALLEY. 223 



* 



5. HOLMES VALLEY. 

 (figure 53) 



References. Sellards j (291-292, or 45-46), Sellards & Gunter 3 (113- 

 115), Smith 2 (225), Williams. 



This is a narrow strip, perhaps 25 square miles in extent, lying 

 between the lime-sink or cypress pond region and the lake region, 

 in Washington County, It has no counterpart elsewhere, but is 

 similar in vegetation to the Knox Hill country, and in some other 

 respects to the Tallahassee red hills, described farther on. 



Geology and Soils — No rocks or fossils seem to have yet been 

 discovered in this region, and therefore nothing definite is known 

 about its geology; but it lies wholly within a belt mapped by Matson 

 ns Choctawhatchee marl (Miocene).* 



The soil seems to be mostly residual from the Tertiary forma- 

 tions, and is clayey in some places and sandy in others; the sand be- 

 ing rather coarse. It is evidently above the average of Florida soils in 

 fertility, as indicated by the density of the native vegetation, and 

 the large proportion of the land that is under cultivation. Dr. 

 Smith, on the page above cited, mentions a case in this region where 

 in 1880, 13 acres of land that had been cultivated 35 years without 

 fertilization produced 12 bales of cotton. The vegetation seems to 

 indicate a little more phosphorus in the soil than in the case of the 

 Knox Hill country. 



Topography and Hydrography — In the longitude of Vernon the 

 edge of the lake region south of Holmes Valley is at least 100 feet 

 higher than the lime-sink region north of it, and the "valley" is not 

 much more than a mile wide, so that in that neighborhood it might 

 be regarded as nothing but an inland-facing escarpment, or cnesta 

 (a characteristic feature of some parts of the coastal plain, particu- 

 larly in Alabama). But in the longitude of Wausau the "valley" is 

 about four miles wide, and not much higher or lower than the coun- 

 try on either side of it, and is a belt of low hills rather than a valley. 

 Most of the depressions between the hills have miry ponds or stag- 

 nant sloughs in them instead of streams. But there are a few small 

 branches that start near the high southern ^dgo. of the region south 

 of Vernon, flow in a general northerly direction for a short distance, 



*In sonie cuts on the B. C & St- A. R. R. a few miles south of 

 Wausau can be seen several fe^t of clayey and shaley strata with pro- 

 nounced folds, but apparently devoid of lossils. 



