DISADVANTAGES FROM UNFAVOURABLE SOIL, ETC. 53 



required here than in most other places for the formation of 

 humus, whilst the pasturage can really only be of very small 

 value. 



When reproductive measures are being carried out, which can 

 most advantageously take place by means of planting, care should 

 be taken to avoid any unnecessary breaking up or loosening of 

 the soil, or removal of the soil-covering, whatever it may be, 

 as even the presence of heather, under other circumstances a 

 noxious weed, is welcome at the time of replanting. 



33. The Binding of Shifting Sand. 



Without taking into account the cases in which sand may be 

 allowed to drift in consequence of injudicious treatment, and 

 especially of want of caution in the harvesting of the mature 

 timber, natural causes, such as insect calamities, forest fires, and 

 storms, may also result in a sudden laying bare of the soil, 

 followed by drifting, and it then becomes the duty of the forester 

 to bind or fix them again. 



In order to bring sand already in motion to a standstill, efforts 

 must be made to transform it into woodland, but this has its 

 special difficulties, owing to the mobility of the sand, which leads to 

 small seedlings being laid bare in some places, or buried under sand 

 in others ; hence, wherever the areas to be reclaimed are at all 

 extensive, preliminary measures must first be adopted to interfere 

 with the free motion of the sand, before proceeding to the operation 

 of planting up the tract. 



This takes place either by covering the area in question with 

 sods, &c., or by forming fences or hurdles of woven twigs or 

 brushwood, or by a combination of both of these methods. 



The covering of the sand with sods is either carried out com- 

 pletely over the whole area, or else only partially, the latter 

 generally being the case, owing to the greater expense involved in 

 the former. The material used for covering is either turf, peat 

 of little value, or brushwood. The first is either laid down in 

 strips over the area, or more or less like the pattern on a chess- 

 board, hillocks and bunkers especially being carefully and closely 

 covered, whilst brushwood (as a rule, only that of the Scots Pine 

 is available in such localities) is stuck into the ground with the 

 thick end turned towards the direction from which the wind 



