1885.] SAND-PLAINS OF BELGIUM. 367 



" Inundations or violent storms carry the waters far over the 

 level shores, and bear with tliem the sand to a distance. After a 

 time, the water returns within its bed, and the sand deposits 

 become dry and drift. 



" It has happened also — as it did with the Plattensee in Hungary, 

 that, by draining off the waters of lakes to convert their dried 

 flat shores into useful ground, instead of getting good land, they 

 have added more extensively to the drift-sand." 



IV. — Sea Strand-Dunes : Their Formation and Structure. 



More remarkable at Scheveningen than the wide stretch of beach, 

 are the dunes beyond high-water mark ; but remarkable as they are, 

 they are only the comiterpart to what abound on the sea-shore 

 elsewhere, being peculiar only in their magnitude and extent ; and 

 advantage is only being taken of them here, in view of what has 

 been done elsewhere to prevent the desolation of fertile lands 

 situated farther inland by the drifting upon these of sand borne 

 inland by the wind, to arrest attention and divert it to the study of 

 phenomena presented by strand-dunes everywhere — foresters having 

 abundant cause to glory in what has been achieved by forest 

 engineers in the fixation of dunes by planting on them appropriate 

 grasses and herbage and trees ; but while the results thus obtained 

 are appreciated, the magnitude of the achievement may be but 

 imperfectly realized, and to the forester or any man who may have 

 to undertake similar work even upon a small scale, an acquaint- 

 ance with these phenomena can scarcely fail to be otherwise than 

 useful. 



Herr Wessely thus writes of the sea strand-dunes : — 



" The open sea is for the greater part fringed by a deposit of sand 

 and gravel. When the shore rises as steep rocks out of the sea, the 

 deposit is generally under the water-level ; but when the coast rises 

 out of tide-curved ground, as is the case with most creeks and bays 

 and inland seas, there, through post-diluvian action and the propitia- 

 tion of earth less resistent than is rock, we iiud a very flat shore 

 composed of sand, pebbles, and shingle, and the deposit slopes away 

 into the ocean depths ; and in front of precipitous sea-walls of rock 

 in sheltered and level spots may be seen the shingle and gravel 

 alone. 



" The waves are ever adding more and more material to this 

 deposit — these additions being composed in a, great measure of fine 

 sand borne thither by the storm, whereby the water on the coast is 

 raised some feet above its usual level, whereby again the strand is 

 raised so high that on the return of the waters to their usual level 



& 



