576 DUNES OF GASCONY. 
lands, and in France; and the experiments in the way of 
arresting the drifting of the dunes, and of securing them, and 
the lands they shelter, from the encroachments of the sea, have 
resulted in the adoption of a system of coast improvement sub- 
stantially the same in all these countries. The sands, like the 
forests, have now their special literature, and the volumes and 
memoirs, which describe them and the processes employed to 
subdue them, are full of scientific interest and of practical 
instruction. 
Dunes of Gascony. 
In the small kingdom of Denmark, inclusive of the duchies 
of Schleswig and Holstein, the dunes cover an area of more 
than two hundred and sixty square miles. The breadth of the 
chain is very various, and in some places it consists only of a 
single row of sand-hills, while in others, it is more than six 
miles wide.* The dunes of the Prussian coast are vaguely esti- 
mated to cover from eighty-five to one hundred and ten thou- 
sand acres; those of Holland one hundred and forty thousand 
acres ; and those of Gascony more than two hundred thousand 
acres. Ido not find any estimate of their extent in other pro- 
vinces of France, or in the Baltic provinces of Russia, but it is 
probable that the entire quantity of dune land upon the Atlantic 
and Daltic shores of Europe does not fall much short of a 
million of acres.t This vast deposit of sea-sand extends along 
* ANDERSEN, Om Klitformationen, pp. 78, 262, 275. 
+ In an article on the dunes of Europe, in vol. 29 (1864) of Aus der Nata, 
p. 590, the dunes are estimated to cover, on the islands and coasts of Schles- 
wig Holstein, in North-west Germany, Denmark, Holland, and France, one 
hundred and eighty-one German, or nearly four thousand English square 
miles ; in Scotland, about ten German, or two hundred and ten English miles ; 
in Ireland, twenty German, or four hundred and twenty English miles; and 
in England, one hundred and twenty German, or more than twenty-five hun- 
dred English miles. Pannewitz (Anleitung zum Anbau der Sandflichen), as 
cited by Andresen (Om Klitformationen, p. 45), states that the drifting sands 
of Europe, including, of course, sand plains as well as dunes, cover an extent 
of 21,000 square miles. This is, perhaps, an exaggeration, though there is, 
