DUNE VINEYARDS—REMOVAL OF DUNES. 599 
immediately productive; but this method is applicable only in 
exceptional cases of favorable climate and exposure. It consists 
in planting vineyards upon the dunes, and protecting them by 
hedges of broom, “rica scoparia, so disposed as to form 
rectangles about thirty feet by forty. The vines planted in 
these enclosures thrive admirably, and the grapes produced by 
them are among the best grown in France. The dunes are so 
far from being an unfavorable soil for the vine, that fresh sea- 
sand is regularly employed as a fertilizer for it, alternating 
every other season with ordinary manure. The quantity of 
sand thus applied every second year, raises the surface of the 
vineyard about four or five inches. The vines are cut down 
every year to three or four shoots, and the raising of the soil 
rapidly covers the old stocks. As fast as buried, they send out 
new roots near the surface, and thus the vineyard is constantly 
renewed, and has always a youthful appearance, though it may 
have been already planted a couple of generations. This 
practice is ascertained to have been followed for two centuries, 
and is among the oldest well-authenticated attempts of man to 
resist and vanquish the dunes.* 
The artificial removal of dunes, no longer necessary as a 
protection, does not appear to have been practised upon a large 
scale except in the Netherlands, where the numerous canals 
furnish an easy and economical means of transporting the 
sand, and where the construction and maintenance of sea and 
river dikes, and of causeways and other embankments and 
fillings, create a great demand for that material. Sand is also 
employed in Holland, in large quantities, for improving the con- 
sistence of the tough clay bordering upon or underlying diluvial 
deposits, and for forming an artificial soil for the growth of 
certain garden and ornamental vegetables. When the dunes 
are removed, the ground they covered is restored to the domain 
of industry; and the quantity of land recovered in the Neth- 
erlands by the removal of the barren sands which encumbered 
it, amounts to hundreds and perhaps thousands of acres. 
* BoOITEL, Mise en valeur des Terres pauvres, pp. 212, 218. 
