NOTES ON THE TAPPING- OF THE CLUSTEB PINE. 265 



Moreover, this pine yields a certain quantity of 

 charcoal, which is used locally for metallurgic pur- 

 poses. A cubic metre of it weighs from 200 to 220 

 kilos., and sells for eighteen or twenty francs the kilo. 



We have here evidently very valuable resources, 

 which only require the establishment of means of 

 communication to be developed. These do not 

 exist, at least so far as the dunes are concerned ; 

 and this state of things must continue as long as the 

 plantations that have been made are not old enough 

 to attract purchasers. Then alone will good roads 

 be made, which will perhaps enable us to grow this 

 pine there as well for its wood as for its resin. 



The cultivation of the Cluster Pine has already 

 rendered incalculable service to the surrounding 

 country. It has reclaimed a considerable extent of 

 low lying marshy lands, that used to be the centre 

 of pestilential diseases which decimated the popula- 

 tion ; it has drained them, it has converted them 

 into productive districts, and has introduced trade 

 and comfort, where poverty and wretchedness seemed 

 to be the unalterable lot of the inhabitants. It has 

 arrested the drifting dunes, which used to be a 

 perpetual menace to fields and habitations. The 

 good it has done can yet be increased. In the 

 department of the Landes alone the extent of land 

 reclaimed by forest culture is estimated at nearly 

 2,000 square miles ; it is about as much in the 

 department of the Gironde ; and very soon the 

 treeless moors as well as the naked dunes will only 

 be remembered as things of the past. 



In concluding these very incomplete notes, I will 



