l8o FLORIDA GEOLOGICAL SURVEY-SEVENTH ANNUAL REPORT. 
level topography and grayish clayey soil (at least clayey in com¬ 
parison with the average soil of central Florida), something unusual 
for peninsular Florida, but suggesting the “pine meadows” of 
southern Mississippi.* 
As far as the aspect of the vegetation is concerned, it differs 
from the high pine land in the scarcity of oaks, and from the pal¬ 
metto flat woods in the scarcity of saw-palmetto and other bushes. 
The undergrowth is mostly wire-grass. With increasing moisture 
and humus it passes gradually intp the short-leaf pine and palmetto 
forests just described. As the writer has seen this vegetation only 
from the train, and the area of it within the limits of this report is. 
very small, no satisfactory list of plants can be given at this time. 
The long-leaf pine yields lumber and naval stores, as usual, and 
many cattle are grazing on the wire-grass. Some vegetables have 
been raised on this kind of land around the new town of Burbank, a 
few miles northeast of Silver Spring, a little outside of the area 
mapped. 
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS. 
The “Ocala area” includes parts of five geographical regions, 
and its vegetation comprises about a dozen characteristic types, all 
of which intergrade more or less.f The soil represents very nearly 
the extremes of sterility and fertility, with many intermediate con¬ 
ditions, and the vegetation is pretty closely correlated with it. The 
poorest soils are easily recognized by their high proportion of ever¬ 
greens and Ericaceae, and vice versa. (Although we have not 
enough chemical analyses of soils from this particular area to war¬ 
rant positive assertions, evidence gathered elsewhere points to 
the conclusion that evergreens have little use for potassium and 
Ericaceae for calcium.) 
Leguminous plants are scarce both in the poorest soils and in 
those with abundant humus, and seem to prefer dry but moderately 
rich soils. 
Some very dissimilar types of vegetation with similar soils are 
differentiated by different frequencies of fire. Fire originating by 
*See Bull. Torrey Bot. Club 41 :555~556. I 9 : 4 - 
tin taxonomic studies of plants and animals intergradatitin has commonly 
been regarded as an indication of specific identity. But in studies of soils and 
vegetation it is necessary, or at least expedient, to recognize a number of pro¬ 
nounced tendencies, or extremes, regardless of intermediate conditions; and the 
same principles ought to apply in systematic botany and zoology also. 
