NOTES ON CONTINENTAL FORESTRY IN 1906. 67 
this and similar purposes. But the demands are growing year by 
year, and this nursery is no longer large enough to satisfy those 
now being made, hence two new nurseries are being formed else- 
where. Since 1862, plants or seed have been thus delivered to 
1745 different applicants, communes and private parties, and 
21,000 acres have been planted at a total cost of £33,120, 
of which £5520 have been contributed by the Department, 
415,280 by private parties, £1840 by communes, and 
410,480 by the State. Including everything, the average 
cost of planting has been £5, 4s. an acre. In 1904 petty 
subventions, amounting to £1150, have been made by the 
State and the Department to communes and public bodies 
towards this work, and the law of 1882 has been applied to 
ensure the compulsory acquisition and planting of two tracts, 
aggregating about 10,750 acres. 
Throughout the Department of the Loire there are over 
100,000 acres of waste land and rough grazing, worth at most 
only from 1s. to 1s. 4d. per acre per annum. Experiments 
made on several acres in the commune of Doizien have 
shown that even by eradicating broom, and dressing with 
chemical manures parts that are not too rocky or too steep, 
a seven-fold return of hay can be had over what can be 
collected on the unimproved land. 
To provide useful object-lessons for school children in some 
of the hill-communes, plots of 12 to 15 acres with good soil, but 
overgrown by broom and gorse, have been acquired at a cost 
of about £3, 4s. an acre, and planted by the children. It is 
expected that at 30 years of age these small plantations will 
be worth from £32 to £48 an acre, and the profits arising from 
-ach plantations will go to augment the contributions to the fund 
for old-age pensions. The State is assisting this movement by 
contributing half the sum necessary for buying the land, and 
defraying the whole cost of planting. 
Closely connected with these well-considered and continuous 
efforts to afforest waste lands, special interest attaches to the 
results now being obtained from the great work achieved in 
planting the dunes of Gascony with Maritime Pine. These well- 
known plantations of the Zandes were originally begun in 1803 
at Lit-et-Mixe, and in 1804 at Mimizan, when the first sowings 
were made to try and fix the shifting sand. The work of 
fixation proceeded continuously, being carried out on the largest 
