44 
FLORIDA STATE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 
it is now known, is given. 44owever, it should be remembered that 
the areas where these Pleistocene beds lie near enough to be consid¬ 
ered part of the soil are much more restricted than is their geological 
distribution. 
In the.central part of the peninsula, especially northwest of Gaines¬ 
ville, the Alachua clay is so near the surface that it forms a part of 
the subsoil, but does not enter into the formation of the surface soil. 
Over much of the area where this formation occurs, it is too deeply 
buried to be considered a part of the soil. 
On the north bank of the Manatee River, in the vicinity of Ellen- 
ton, there are some areas of land, valuable for truck gardening, where 
the residual clays left by the solution of. the limestone of the Tampa 
formation form very good soils. In some places, these clays contain 
more or less Pleistocene sand, and angular or sub-angular fragments 
of flint are common. There are doubtless other localities where the 
residual products of this limestone are near enough to the surface to 
form part of the soils, but their distribution is not yet known. The 
limestones of the Chattahoochee formation and the Vicksburg group 
may form parts of the soils in a few localities, but they are usually 
too deeply buried beneath the younger geological formations to be 
important in soil formation. It is the proximity to the surface of 
marls or residual products of the Vicksburg group which is regarded 
as the source of the fertility of many of the “hammock" lands near 
the west coast. It is doubtless the presence of such materials near the 
surface which accounts for the excellent growth of timber in places 
where the surface soil is very poor. 
CLASSIFICATION. 
In 1897, Prof. Milton Whitney made a general. examination of 
the Florida soils and classified them as follows: 
The principal types of soils examined were the first, second and third quality 
of high pine land; the pine flats or so-called “flat woods”; the light hammock, 
the gray or heavy hammock, the mixed land, the heavy marl hammock; the 
pineapple land; the Etonia scrub, the spruce-pine scrub; and the Lafayette 
formation. 
Since the publication of Prof. Whitney’s report detailed soil sur¬ 
veys have been made in the vicinity of Gainesville, and in Jefferson, 
Leon, Gadsden and Escambia Counties. In the detailed work, the 
soils were classified by their physical properties, origin and topog¬ 
raphy. In this classification texture is the most important character¬ 
istic. In Florida, the principal types of soils recognized are sands, 
fine sands, sandy loam, and fine sandy loams. Subordinate types are 
loams, silt loams, clays, muck and meadow. These types have, with 
