REBOISEMENT. 129 



yet clothed in such a way that the most violent storm 

 could take but little more sand from them ; and this was 

 immediately replaced from the dune itself. A great part 

 of the dune lands were also transformed into forests of 

 Scotch fir, and this not only in low-lying parts, but to 

 considerable heights. 



'Besides this, the fundamental improvements which 

 Krause introduced into Dunenbau, or engineering opera- 

 tions on dunes, and more especially the exposition of net- 

 work plantings, became a benefit to the whole of Europe ; 

 and the last named system of planting bids fair to be 

 perpetuated in practice, so that the Krause period showed 

 an important improvement in the art, the end of which 

 we have not yet seen.' 



The Prussian Stmnddiinenbau of the present [1873] is 

 prosecuted under the superintending direction of Ober- 

 landbau-Director G. Hagen, who, in his valuable Manual 

 of Hydraulic Engineering in 1863, devoted to this subject 

 a thorough discussion, resulting in the fundamental 

 development of the rules now observed in such works. 



The most substantial feature of the new advance is the 

 exceptionally excellent plan of a rational Vordune, which, 

 by arresting the sea-sand continuously along the strand, 

 and maintaining always a gentle slope towards the sea, 

 shelters the high dunes from the lash of the waves. 



Hagen in his valuable work states again and again 

 that the Arundo arenaria only promises success, and is only 

 recommendable, where there is a persistent sanding up ' a 

 fact/ says Wessely, ' which, it appears to me, has not yet 

 been sufficiently attended to, and like as in Krause's time, 

 when the strand-grass was looked to too much as the 

 universal binding plant, so now it would be much better 

 to combine with the use of it other means of arresting the 

 drift/ 



The dunes at Danzig offer many highly interesting 

 phenomena, though they may be of but secondary impor- 

 tance in dune culture. 



K 



