PRELIMINARY REPORT ON THE PEAT DEPOSITS 
OF FLORIDA. 
ROLAND M. HARPER. 
PREFACE. 
In the preparation of this report the writer has spent only about 
twelve months in the employ of the Survey, and as a considerable 
part of that time was necessarily taken up with office work, it was 
not possible to devote more than a few days, on the average, to the 
exploration of each county. Under these circumstances it has ob¬ 
viously not been possible to discuss the peat resources of each coun¬ 
ty in detail, or to describe many individual deposits. Still less has 
it been feasible to make any quantitative estimates, or to study the 
structure and development of each type of peat deposit. Every 
county in the State has been visited, however, and samples of peat 
have been collected in sixteen. 
At some future time, when the population of Florida is con¬ 
siderably denser than at present, it may be found expedient to have 
the peat bogs of the State, or of certain counties, sounded, meas¬ 
ured, analyzed, counted and mapped by an engineer, for strictly com¬ 
mercial purposes, or studied in a thoroughly scientific manner, re¬ 
gardless of economic considerations, by an ecologist; or both. But 
now while so much of Florida is still comparatively unexplored, and 
the peat industry in America is still in its infancy, such detailed 
studies are hardly desirable. The present report is the work of 
one whose specialty is traveling rapidly and jotting down impres¬ 
sions, without stopping to make measurements or delve into minute 
details. 
Instead of discussing single counties, townships, or swamps, as 
several peat investigators in more thickly settled or geographically 
homogeneous states have done, I’have attempted first to subdivide 
the State into natural divisions, each of which is essentially uniform 
in one or several respects, and to sketch briefly the peat situa¬ 
tion in each. I have then essayed a classification of the peat de¬ 
posits of the State, based primarily on the color, depth, fluctua¬ 
tions, etc., of water, and secondarily on their vegetation. As 
