574 PEOTECTION OF DUNES. 



Besides the special office of dune plantations already noticed, 

 these forests have the same general uses as other woods, and they 

 have sometimes formed, by their droppings, so thick a layer of vege- 

 table mould that the sand beneath has become sufficiently secured 

 to allow the wood to be felled, and the surface to be ploughed 

 and cultivated with ordinary field crops. 



In some cases it has been found possible to confine and culti- 

 vate coast sand-liills, even without prehminary f orestal plantation. 

 Thus, in the vicinity of Cap Breton in France, a peculiar process 

 is successfully employed, both for preventing the drifting of 

 dunes, and for rendering the sands themselves immediately pro- 

 ductive ; but this method is appKcable only in exceptional cases 

 of favorable climate and exposure. It consists in planting vine- 

 yards upon the dunes, and protecting them by hedges of broom, 

 Erica scoparia, so disposed as to form rectangles about thirty 

 feet by forty. The vines planted in these enclosures tlu-ive ad- 

 mn-ably, and the grapes produced by them are among the best 

 grown in France. The dimes are so far from being an unfavor- 

 able 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 centu- 

 ries, 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 pro- 

 tection, does not appear to have been practiced 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 oi 

 causeways and other embankments and fillings, create a great de- 

 mand for that material. Sand is also employed in Holland, in 



* BoiTEL, Mm en valeur des Terres pauvres, pp. 212, 218. 



