DRIFT-SANDS AND THEIR FORMATIONS. 537 



The origin of the bare sand-spots may be traced to the agency 

 of man. The immigrating nomadic populations required for their 

 herds not wood, but pasture and tillable land, and mercilessly 

 cleared away the forest. The land thereby became arid, and 

 wherever a pasture or meadow was not established, the sand, de- 

 prived of its covering, became a prey to the winds. Even if this 

 view be regarded as a hypothesis that can not be proved, it is at 

 least illustrated and made comprehensible by events which are 

 historically authenticated or are still taking place. When the 

 Turks were driven out of Hungary, the sand-tracts, for the most 

 part, lay waste. The Italian Griselini, who traveled through 

 the Banat under a commission of the Empress Maria Theresa, 

 wrote : " For nearly eight German miles in length and from nine 

 to ten thousand fathoms in breadth, the sand, when it is not moist, 

 is so fugitive that it is taken uj) by the wind and deposited in 

 little hills of various heights." 



The once well-clothed level sand region of Tidsvild in Zealand, 

 where a religious house was built in the twelfth century, was, at 

 a later date, through carelessness and the destruction of the woods 

 during the Swedish invasion of 1658-'60, given up to the ravages 

 of the winds. Wide tracts and even valleys, like Tomb, and, in 

 1730, Tibirke, were overwhelmed with sand. The Government 

 was aroused by these disasters, and earnestly undertook the work 

 of irrigating the sand. The enterprise was successful, a fact of 

 which a memorial stone erected in the territory bears witness, in 

 an inscription in Danish, German, and Latin, relating, " The drift- 

 sand was watered at the command of Kings Frederick and Chris- 

 tian, by the faithful industry of Warden Frederick von Granu and 

 Roehl's skilled hand." A similar instance of the letting loose of 

 the drift-sand through the careless destruction of the woods is re- 

 corded in East Prussia. 



There are cases even now where, through the greed or igno- 

 rance of man, bare sand-tracts are allowed to be formed in the 

 midst of cultivated lands. This takes place, for example, where 

 grass-land is pastured to excess, or the turf is trodden out by the 

 too frequent passage of large herds over the same spot. Exposure 

 to the direction of the prevailing winds, subjecting broken spots 

 to frequent sweepings and promoting the washing out of ruts 

 by rains, poor farming, and careless burning of the shrubbery 

 are also dangerous, and in Hungary have led to the enactment of 

 laws regulating the treatment of sand-lands. 



As has already been mentioned, the noxious quality of sand 

 consists not so much in its own infertility as in its being subject 

 to transportation by strong winds and deposition upon fertile 

 spots, where it buries and destroys the lower vegetation. When 

 it is thus driven or flies away from its original place^ it receives 



