DUNES ON THE BALTIC. 653 



Dimes of Western Europe. 



Upon the western coast of Europe, on the contrary, the rav- 

 ages occasioned by the movement of sand-dunes, and the serious 

 consequences often resulting from the destruction of them, have 

 long: engaged the eai'nest attention of Governments and of scien- 

 tilic men, and for neai-ly a century persevering and systematic 

 effort has been made to bring them under human control. The 

 subject has been carefully studied in Denmark and the adjacent 

 duchies, in Western Prussia, in the Netherlands, and in France ; 

 and the experiments in the way of arresting the di'ifting 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 sys- 

 tem of coast improvement substantially the same in all these coun- 

 tries. The sands, hke the forests, have now their special literature, 

 and the volumes and memoirs, which describe them and the pro- 

 cesses employed to subdue them, are full of scientific interest and 

 of practical instruction. 



Dimes* on the Baltic and Atlamiic Shores of Europe. 



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.f The dunes 

 of the Prussian coast are vaguely estimated to cover from eighty- 

 five to one hundred and ten thousand acres ; those of Holland one 

 hundred and forty thousand acres ; and those of Gascony more 

 than two himdred thousand acres. I do not find any estimate of 

 their extent in other provinces of France, or in the Baltic prov- 



* The Icelandic or Old Northern, the ancient common language of the coun- 

 tries peopled by the Scandinavian race, rich as it was in terms descriptive of 

 natural scenery, had no name for dune. The modem Icelanders call the dune 

 sand-melr, or simply melr, — melr being properly the designation of a species of 

 bent-gr&ss, or wild oats, with which dunes are often more or less covered. Ice- 

 landic geographers, however, apply to the dune-ranges of Jutland the name 

 of klettr, a cliff, or rocky hill— in modem Danish, Rlitt. 



f Andresen, Om Klitformationen, pp. 78, 262, 275. 

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