DUNES OF DENMARK. 595 
The example of Denmark was soon followed in the neighbor- 
ing kingdom of Prussia, and in the Netherlands; and, as we 
shall see hereafter, these improvements have been everywhere 
crowned with most flattering success. 
Under the administration of Reventloy, a little before the 
close of the last century, the Danish Government organized a 
regular system of improvement in the economy of the dunes. 
They were planted with the arundo and other vegetables of 
similar habits, protected against trespassers, and at last partly 
covered with forest trees. By these means much waste soil has 
been converted into arable ground, a large growth of valuable 
timber obtained, and the further spread of the drifts, which 
threatened to lay waste the whole peninsula of Jutland, to a 
considerable extent arrested. 
In France, the operations for fixing and reclaiming the dunes 
—which began under the direction of Brémontier about the 
same time as in Denmark, and which are, in principle and in 
many of their details, similar to those employed in the latter 
kingdom—have been conducted on a far larger scale, and with 
greater success, than in any other country. This is partly ow- 
ing to a climate more favorable to the growth of suitable forest 
trees than that of Northern Europe, and partly to the liberality 
of the Government, which, having more important landed 
interests to protect, has put larger means at the disposal of 
the engineers than Denmark and Prussia have found it con- 
venient to appropriate to that purpose. The area of the dunes 
already secured from drifting, and planted by the processes in- 
vented by Brémontier and perfected by his successors, is about 
100,000 acres.* This amount of productive soil, then, has been 
added to the resources of France, and a still greater quantity 
of valuable land has been thereby rescued from the other- 
wise certain destruction with which it was threatened by the 
advance of the rolling sand-hills. 
The improvements of the dunes on the coast of West Prussia 
* “« These plantations, perseveringly continued from the time of Brémontier, 
now cover more than 40,000 hectares, and compose forests which are not 
