THE MAEITIME PINE. 573 



is exclusive of the value of the timber, when finally cut, which 

 of course amounts to a very considerable sum. 



In Denmark, where the chmate is much colder, hardier con- 

 ifers, as well as the birch and other northern trees, are found to 

 answer a better purpose than the maritime pine, and it is doubt- 

 ful whether this tree would be able to resist the winter on the 

 dunes of Massachusetts. Probably the pitch-pine of the North- 

 ern States, in conjunction with some of the American oaks, 

 birches and poplars, and especially the robinia or locust, would 

 prove very suitable to be employed on the sand-hills of Cape Cod 

 and Long Island. The ailanthus, now coming into notice as a 

 sand-loving tree, some species of tamarisk, and perhaps the Cu- 

 ^ressus macrocarpa, already found useful on the dunes in Cah- 

 fornia, may prove valuable auxiharies in resisting the encroach- 

 ment of drifting sands, whether in America or in Europe, and 

 the intermixing of different species would doubtless be attended 

 with as valuable results in this as in other branches of forest 

 economy. 



It can not, indeed, be affirmed that human power is able to 

 arrest altogether the incursions of the waves on sandy coasts, by 

 planting, the beach and clothing the dunes with wood. On the 

 contrary, both in Holland and on the French coast, it has been 

 found necessary to protect the dunes themselves by pihng and by 

 piers and sea-walls of heavy masonary. But experience has am- 

 ply shown that the processes referred to are entirely successful in 

 preventing the movement of the dunes, and the drifting of their 

 sands over cultivated lands behind them ; and that, at the same 

 time, the plantations very much retard the landward progress of 

 the waters.* 



In a carefully prepared article on the Southern pineries published in an 

 American magazine — I think Harper's — a few years ago, it was stated that the 

 resin from the turpentine distilleries was sometimes allowed to run to waste ; 

 and the writer, in one instance, observed a mass, thus rejected as rubbish, 

 which was estimated to amount to two thousand barrels. Olmsted saw, near 

 a distillery which had been in operation but a single year, a pool of resin 

 estimated to contain three thousand barrels, which had been allowed to run 

 off as waste. — A Journey in the seaboard Slave States, 1863, p. 345. 



* See a very interesting article entitled "Le Littoral de la France," by 

 ^LiSBE Reclus, in the Bevue des Deux Mondes for December, 1862, pp. 901^ 

 S36. 



