A LESSON FROM FRANCE 



1157 



It was not until July 2, 1801, that Bremontier was suc- 

 cessful in creating a committee, appointed by the Min- 

 ister for the Home Department (1 should judge this to 

 be the same as our Department of the Interior), with 

 instructions to "continue to fix, plant and care for the 

 growth of trees on the sand dunes on the Bay of Biscay." 

 Bremontier, very properly, was made President of this 

 Committee and the work was resumed in the Department 

 of Lands, in 1803 at Lit and Mimizan (where the fourth 

 battalion of the 20th Engineers was located). After this 

 the planting of trees went on uninterruptedly and with in- 

 creasing activity until 1865 when the primary project was 

 announced by the French Government as completed. The 

 total cost over this entire time was less than 14,000,000 

 francs ($2,800,000) and now today, with a very perfect 

 forest plan carried out, those sand dunes which in 1790 

 threatened all of Southwestern France, have been trans- 

 formed into an immense forest and exhaustless source of 

 income for the inhabitants. The vast majority of the 

 inhabitants of the Gironde and the Landes, most espe- 

 cially the Landes, find employment with good remunera- 

 tion in the exploitation of the present-day forest. 



It was an admirable victory of human intelligence over 

 brutal nature and indisputably this one man, Bremontier, 

 who died in Paris in 1809, deserves the gratitude of not 



only the people of France, but of all those interested in 

 forestry throughout the world. 



From this district there is shipped to Great Britain 

 alone over 800,000 tons of pit props per year to say 

 nothing of the shipment of resin and turpentine, and 

 until 1914 an average of approximately 600 shiploads per 

 year of forest products left the ports of Bordeaux and 

 Arcachon. Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Holland and 

 Russia, were all purchasers of this product, which was 

 made possible by the indomitable will of this real hero 

 of France to whom two monuments have been built in 

 the heart of the land which he veritably made. 



We have, in America, a district on our South Atlantic 

 seaboard quite similar in soil property to that of the 

 Department of Landes in France, and while we rest on 

 our oars, with a firm conviction that our timber supply 

 is inexhaustible, we must be brought to the realization 

 that this supply is ever moving westward. There are 

 those who scofif at a policy of reforestation, but the 

 work of the man and the eminent success of the man who 

 is the subject of this article, stands out forever as a 

 refutation of any argument against a sane forest policy. 

 Whether or not we have in the United States a Bremon- 

 tier I do not know, but if we have, it is high time that he 

 come forth and perpetuate our forest East of the Rockies. 



WINTER SCENE AT ONE OF THE SAWMILLS IN FRANCE 



