INLAND SAND-PLAINS 579' 



by the sands ; and excavations are constantly bringing to light 

 proof of human habitation and of agricultural industry, in former 

 ages, on soils now buried beneath deep drifts from the dunes and 

 beaches of the sea-coast.* 



Extensive tracts of valuable plain-land, in the Netherlands and 

 in France, have been covered in the same way with a layer of sand 

 deep enough to render them infertile, and they can be restored to 

 cultivation only by processes analogous to those employed for fix- 

 ing and improving the dunes.f Diluvial sand-plains, also, have 

 been reclaimed by these methods in the Duchy of Austria, be- 

 tween Vienna and the Semmering ridge, in Jutland, and in the 

 great champaign country of Northern Germany, especially the 

 Mark Bradenburg, where artificial forests can be propagated with 

 ease, and where, consequently, this branch of industry has been 

 pm-sued on a great scale, and with highly beneficial results, both 

 as respects the supply of forest products and the preparation of 

 the soil for agricultural use, as well as with much advantage to 

 local climate. 



As has been already observed, inland sands are generally looser, 

 dryer and more inclined to drift, than those of the sea-coast, where 

 the moist and sahne atmosphere of the ocean keeps them always 

 more or less humid and cohesive. The sands of the valley of the 

 Lower Euphrates — themselves probably of submarine origin, and 

 not derived from dunes — are advancing to the northwest with a 

 rapidity which seems fabulous when compared with the slow 

 movement of the sand-hills of Gascony and the Low German 

 coasts. Loftus, speaking of Niliyya, an old Arab town a few 

 miles east of the ruins of Babylon, says that, " in 1848, the sand 

 began to accumulate around it, and in six years the desert, within 

 a radius of six miles, was covered -with httle, undulating domes^ 

 while the ruins of the city were so buried that it is now impossi- 

 ble to trace their original form or extent." :j; Loftus considers this 



* For details, consult Akdresek, Om Klitformationen, pp. 223, 236. 



f When the deposit is not very deep, and the adjacent land lying to the lee- 

 ward of the prevailing winds is covered with water or otherwise worthless, 

 the surface is sometimes freed from the drifts by repeated harrowings, which 

 loosen the sand, so that the wind takes it up and transports it to grounda 

 where accumulations of it are less injurious. 



X Travels and ResearcJies in Glialdaa, chap. ix. 



Dwight mentions {Travels, vol. iii., p. 101) an instance of great mischief 

 from the depasturing of the beach grass which had been planted on a sand 



