6l2 



Forestry Quarterly. 



It appears that Bremontier, who is usually recognized as the 

 father of this reclamation work, was preceded by Baron Charle- 

 voix de Villiers and by M. Desbiey. The last mentioned had as 

 early as the year 1776 first proposed the use of the Maritime Pine 

 and had planted it in various places. 



De Villiers, an engineer, was the first to claim the fixation of 

 the sand dunes as necessary for the protection of the pine plan- 

 tations which he recommended for the reclamation of the Landes. 

 He never had a chance to put his propositions into action. Nor 

 did Bremontier quite solve the problem of the dunes. It was 

 Peychan who invented the idea of the front dune and of the 

 mechanical covering of the shifting sands. 



The largest amount of the work of establishing the pineries was, 

 however, called forth when the war of the rebellion stopped the 

 naval store supplies from the United States, and prices for these 

 rose to four times their present average. Some one and three- 

 quarter million acres were planted with Maritime Pine. 



These pineries, as far as managed by the State, only 130,000 

 acres, are under a rotation of 75 to 80 years, which will probably 

 be reduced to 60 years, in 5-year periods. In the periodic age 

 classes I to IV (1-20 years) weedings go on; in the areas V to IX 

 (20-45 years) all trees which interfere with the development of 

 the main stand are bled to death {gemmage a niort), and, of 

 course, removed in thinnings. In the older age classes X to XIII 

 (45-65 years) only the smaller trees are bled to death, the others 

 are carefully bled. The last age class (70-75 years) is bled to 

 death in five years, and a clearing is then made, natural regener- 

 ation having been secured in the last years. 



Private owners who control the bulk of the area, and corpor- 

 ations work under no such well planned management, their inter- 

 est centers in the largest rosin production. 



The conservative method of bleeding with the use of pots was 

 devised by Hughes de Tarnos in 1844, but did not find general ap- 

 plication until much later. The bleeding begins when trees are 

 only 6 inches in diameter; 1,000 pines furnishing 6 to 10 casks 

 (chalosse) of 340 liter, worth usually 70 francs, in 1907 over 112 

 francs. 



Mine props furnish the most important return freight for 

 English trading vessels from Bordeaux, over 50 per cent, of the 



