174 FOREST PLANTING. 



poplars, willows, etc., it will not be difficult to start a 

 coppice-wood which, will within a term of 10 or 15 

 years, furnish material not only for the tanner, but also 

 for the cooper and the paper maker. 



The continual treatment of woods as coppices is not 

 quite natural, and cannot be fully maintained, unless 

 the trees to which such repeated exploitations cause 

 death (oaks) are sometimes replaced by seedlings. 

 When for one reason or the other, especially through ex- 

 haustion of the soil, these replacements become imprac- 

 ticable, there remains but one remedy, that is to give up 

 the copse culture and substitute for foliaged trees coni- 

 fers. These will grow well on lands on which the 

 former cannot live, and bring the soil to such a degree 

 of fertility, that it may later be used for agricultural 

 purposes. 



CHAPTER IX. 



COVERING SAND DUNES ON THE SEA COAST WITH 

 TREES AND SHRUBS. 



WHEN the sand in the ocean is washed up by the surf, 

 it dries on the beach and, in this condition, is carried 

 inland by the wind and piled up in hills. The little 

 mineralic grains of which the sand consists, and which, 

 at the surface of the beach, for want of sufficient means 

 to arrest them, are continually in an unsettled condition, 

 will be easily by the winds, brought into a landward 

 motion, covering up, in due time, vast fertile tracts of 

 land with sterile stuff. In Europe, there are made, on 

 several places, the strongest efforts to reclaim millions 

 of acres, which thus had been, from the most fertile 



