608 SANDS OF EASTERN EUROPE. 
invested. In 1849, the unimproved portion of the Campine 
was estimated at little less than three hundred and fifty thou- 
sand acres. The example of I'rance prompted experiments 
in the planting of trees, especially the maritime pine, upon 
this barren waste, and the results have now been such as to show 
that its sands may both be fixed and made productive, not only 
without loss, but with positive pecuniary advantage.* 
There are still unsnbdued sand wastes in many parts of in- 
terior Europe not familiarly known to tourists or even geo- 
graphers. “Olkuez and Schiewier in Poland,” says Naumann, 
“lie in true sand deserts, and a boundless plain of sand stretches 
around Ozenstockau, on which there grows neither tree nor 
shrub. In heavy winds, this plain resembles a rolling sea, and 
the sand-hills rise and disappear like the waves of the ocean. 
The heaps of waste from the Olkuez mines are covered with 
sand to the depth of four fathoms.” + No attempts have yet 
been made to subdue the sands of Poland, but when peace and 
prosperity shall be restored to that unhappy country, there is 
no reasonable doubt that the measures, which have proved so 
successful on similar formations in Germany and near Odessa, 
may be employed with advantage in the Polish deserts.{ 
* Economie Rurale de la Belgique, par EMILE DE LAVELEYB, Revue des 
Deux Mondes, Juin, 1861, pp. 617-644. The quantity of land annually re- 
claimed on the Campine is stated at about 4,000 acres. Canals for navigation 
and irrigation have been constructed through the Campine, and itis said that 
its barren sands, improved at an expense of one hundred dollars per acre, 
yield, from the second year, a return of twenty-five dollars to the acre. 
+ Geognosie, ii., p. 1173. 
t ‘“‘ Sixteen years ago,” says an Odessa landholder, ‘‘I attempted to fix the 
sand of the steppes, which covers the rocky ground to the depth of a foot, 
and forms moving hillocks with every change of wind. I tried acacias and 
pines in vain; nothing would grow in such a soil. At length I planted the 
varnish tree, or ailanthus, which succeeded completely in binding the sand.” 
This result encouraged the proprietor to extend his plantations over both 
dunes and sand steppes, and in the course of sixteen years this rapidly grow- 
ing tree had formed real forests. Other landholders have imitated his ex- 
ample with great advantage.—RENTscH, Der Wald, pp. 44, 45. 
