UPPER INDIA. 37 



This tree has also in France been planted on inland dunes, 

 and with equal success. The Ailanthus glandulosa, or Japan 

 varnish-tree, has been successfully planted near Odessa for 

 fixing dunes, and the tamarisk has also been recommended 

 for that purpose. 



Any tree that can be grown on these loose sands, as also 

 grasses, will be useful and tend " to bind them, and prevent 

 their blowing over and covering the surrounding country ; the 

 chief thing after planting being to prevent destruction of the 

 trees and grasses by cattle. 



Where the land has not been reduced to the state of these 

 dunes, we find it very much impoverished and perhaps uncul- 

 tivated, or only cultivated at intervals of a few years with the 

 inferior descriptions of grain in the rains. The surface- soil is 

 sandy, but below a few inches of this sandy soil there is a firm 

 substratum of stiffer earth. It appears as if the finer parti- 

 cles of the soil on the higher lands had been carried away by 

 surface- drainage, and only the coarser gritty sand left behind. 

 When this process has been going on for a long period, we 

 have the dunes or sandhills, perfectly barren as far as regards 

 producing food for man or cattle, and next the impoverished 

 lands which only occasionally produce a crop of an inferior 

 description of grain. On these lands the dunes are gradually 

 encroaching; they are being reduced to the state of the 

 dunes ; and merely require time to become as useless agricul- 

 turally, unless steps are taken to prevent the spreading of 

 the dunes. 



In former times, when these lands were regularly cultivated, 

 and the banks round the fields kept in repair, all rain falling 

 on them must have been arrested by the loosened cultivated 

 soil, and .the ridges round the fields, either till it had time to 

 sink into the soil too deeply to be evaporated, or would have 

 been evaporated from the surface. There could have been no 



