in 



Denmark, Sioeden, and Russia. 405 



Kiel crosses tlie southern part of Holsteln, and passes through 

 some of the dreariest parts of this extensive duchy. About 

 one-half of Holstein consists of sandy, unproductive tracts of 

 land, and of what are considered by many as irreclaimable heath 

 and moor. Nearly all the flat and level country, with the 

 exception of the marsh-lands, is more or less of this character. 

 Where it undulates and rises into hills, and especially on the 

 northern and eastern porlions of the duchy, the soil changes in 

 character, the unfruitful gravel and sand giving place to occasional 

 clays and to clayey loams and marls, productive in corn and rape, 

 fruitfid in milk and butter, and bearing a natural growth of magni- 

 ficent beech. 



The existence of so much comparatively worthless land in 

 Holstein is, I believe, contrary to the general impression not only 

 among ourselves, but, as I have found, in other countries also. 

 This has arisen in part, no doubt, from the fame of the rich 

 alluvial pastures of the marsh-lands on its southern and western 

 borders,* and partly from the fact that the east and north of this 

 duchy — the most frequently seen and visited by travellers— can 

 boast of some of the most picturesque and fertile tracts to be 

 met with in the Danish dominions. To satisfy ourselves that the 

 interior of both Sleswick and Holstein is of greatly inferior agri- 

 cultural value, we have only to cast our eyes upon a recent map 

 of these duchies, when the few names of places which present 

 themselves will indicate at once the thinness of the population 

 and the smallness of the agricultural produce. 



The cause of this comparative infertility is to be found in the 

 geological nature of 'the deposits with which this district is covered. 

 Within the girdle of rich alluvial (marshy) soil that encircles the 

 western coast of South Jutland, Sleswick, and Holstein, stretches 

 a broad band of flat country covered with a white or grey, naturally 

 almost barren, sand (the ahl formation of Forchhammer), in many 

 places lying waste, but which, like the sands of Norfolk, is capable 

 of being brought into cultivation by the aid of the marl and clay 

 which lie beneath, often at an available depth. This sandy zone, 

 which in South Jutland covers more than half the breadth of the 

 Danish peninsula, narrows towards the south, in Sleswick and 

 Holstein, and terminates in a point on the banks of the Elbe, 

 a few miles below Hamburg. 



To the east of this naturally unfruitful band, the remainder of 



* The three Danish-German duchies of Sleswick, Holstein, and Lauenbuvg 

 have an area of about 340 square German miles — of which the marsh-lands 

 occupy between 60 and 70, or about one-fifth of the whole. (See Mr. Stanley 

 Carr's paper on the Dairy Husbandry of Lauenburg, in the first volume of 

 this Journal, p. 371.) On Professor Forchhammer's geological map of 

 Denmark they appear to occupy a considerably smaller area. 



