310 
FLORIDA GEOLOGICAL SURVEY—THIRD ANNUAL REPORT. 
PEAT AS AN AGRICULTURAL SOIL. 
The question of the utilization of peat or muck as a soil to grow 
crops in belongs to an agricultural rather than to a geological 
report, and will not be gone into very deeply here. It has been 
discussed repeatedly in many experiment station bulletins and simi¬ 
lar publications which the interested reader can easily find; and I 
will only undertake to point out a few of the fundamental principles. 
Excellent crops have undoubtedly bee n grown on peat in many 
parts of the world, but there have also been many failures, due 
to imperfect understanding of the conditions, which are very dif¬ 
ferent from those of true or mineral soils. Any one undertaking 
developments of this kind without previous experience would there¬ 
fore do well to proceed cautiously. 
Many people seem to think that an extensive peat deposit, con¬ 
sisting as it does of vegetable debris which has been accumulating 
for centuries, should make a wonderfully fertile soil when drained; 
and as such places are often treeless, the expense of clearing, an 
important item in some fertile soils, is done away with from the 
start. In Florida, attention has recently been focused upon the 
Everglades as a possible addition to the agricultural area of the 
State, partly because of its enormous extent and unique and more or 
less mysterious character, and partly because it is situated in a 
latitude almost free from frost. 
Considering the last point first, a tropical climate is by no means 
essential to successful agriculture. If it was, the farmers in tem¬ 
perate regions could not compete with those in the tropics, and 
northern Florida would be inhabited only by lumber and turpentine 
men, stockmen, phosphate miners, etc. As it is, every climate has 
its advantages and disadvantages, and where there is no frost, 
weeds, insects, and other pests have a much better show than in 
cooler climates. 
Again, peat, unlike humus or ordinary soil, contains very little 
plant food. Its nitrogen is largely inert, as already explained, and 
it is usually sour and very deficient in other ingredients which nearly 
all crops need, such as lime, phosphoric acid, and potash. The 
natural fertility of a soil (i. e., without fertilizers') is indicated by 
the native vegetation better than anything else, as Dr. Hilgard* has 
repeatedly pointed out, and the vegetation growing on peat is 
nearly always of a character signifying acidity and sterility of 
soil. 
The early settlers of the eastern United States quickly selected 
and appropriated the richest soils, which they located with unerring 
*See bibliography. 
