A FOREST TOUR AMONG THE DUNES OF GASCONY. 309 
sleepers and telegraph posts ; and the superintendent assured us 
that, for pine wood, it is much superior to creosote. We saw 
many thousands of injected pine sleepers at this and other railway 
stations, aud were informed that they are largely employed on the 
lines. Planks and scantlings, of which a large stock was lying at 
Labouheyre, are sent for sale to Paris; while poles, extracted 
during thinnings, are used as telegraph posts and mine-props. 
Last year, when we were in the Cevennes, we found that mine- 
props from the Landes were employed there. Charcoal is also 
made in some forests. 
On our way from Labouheyre to St Eulalie, we visited an 
establishment for the manufacture of pinoleum, or pine-oil, which 
is used as a preservative for wood, and also, when prepared in a 
special manner, for burning in lamps, as a substitute for kerosine. 
The machinery was not working, and we were unable to study 
the details of the system ; but the light given by the oil, which is 
made use of to a considerable extent in that part of the country, 
is very good, and it possesses the great advantage of not being 
explosive. 
CHAPTER, LI, 
FORESTS ON THE ADOUR, NEAR DAX. 
The morning after our arrival at Dax, M. Delassasseyne, the 
Inspector, and M. Tellier, Garde-Général, took us to see some 
cork-oaks, which are grown, at a short distance from the town, 
like apple trees in an English orchard. Quercus occidentalis is 
almost identical in appearance with the cork trees we saw in 
Provence ; but its fruit ripens in two years, instead of one, as is 
the case with Q. suber. The trees, which stand isolated from one 
another, and are much branched at about 7 ft. from the ground, 
are visited once in every eight to fourteen years, when the cork is 
removed from the entire stem ; an average sized tree then yields 
about 22 square feet of cork sheets, which represent a net revenue 
of about tenpence a year. It is said that where Q. occidentalis 
occurs mixed with Pinus pinaster, it has here a tendency to drive 
the latter out of the field. 
We spent the afternoon in inspecting the communal oak (Q. 
pedunculata) forests of Tilhieu, situated on the right bank of the 
Adour, a few miles above Dax; they are inundated, two or three 
times a year, to a depth of 12 or 14 ft., or even more, The part 
