CONTINENTAL NOTES — GERMANY. 213 



seams of a ferruginous laterite formation (Ortstein), of varying 

 thickness and at varying depth. 



This is not so. Even pure sandsoils, which can be proved to 

 have been covered with heather for hundreds of years, show no 

 signs of bleaching or of any indication of forming Ortstein. 



Such phenomena are more or less local, and have taken place 

 whilst these regions were under forest, mostly in far-away times ; 

 they occur, under certain conditions, even at present, where a 

 layer of dried peat humus, overgrown with bilberries, cranberries 

 and such like, has formed, in pure pine forests. i The mischief 

 can, however, be prevented, and in most cases even stopped in 

 its earlier stages, by underplanting the pine with beech or 

 other suitable deciduous species. In such cases, however, close 

 planting must be avoided, as a dense canopy would interfere 

 with the decomposition of the shed leaves and do more harm 

 than good, especially on inactive soils. It may be accepted 

 that wherever bleached-out soils and Ortstein are found under a 

 heather canopy, the present growth was not the cause thereof, 

 but only appeared when the previously existing forest had been 

 destroyed. 



The belief in the almost general sterility of the heather regions 

 of North-Western Germany was an unjustifiable invention by 

 earlier writers, who rushed into print without looking below the 

 surface of the outwardly uniform, wide-stretching heather tracts. 

 It must be presumed that, by an unfortunate chance, they 

 pitched on an area to which their description would apply, and 

 that, misled by the outward uniformity of the picture before 

 them, they generalised, and presumed the same uniformity to 

 exist below the surface. It is a curious fact, however, that the 

 original assertion remained unchallenged for many years, and 

 that others, without further investigations, spent much time and 

 thought in searching for causes and reasons which would 

 explain the radical differences between the soils of the heather 

 tracts east and west of the Elbe, which all the time did not exist. 



One of the most ingenious and audacious theories (they had 

 naturally all to be invented in the sanctum of the study) put 

 before a confiding public was, that the lands in North-Western 

 Germany were exposed to only one long uninterrupted glacial 

 period, in contrast to the areas farther east, where intermittent 

 glacial periods took place, and that this prolonged ice-covering 



^ A curious coincidence is the absence of worms in such deterioratins: soils. 



