30 SEA-SIDE PLANTS. 



and flowers, have been overwhelmed by the sand. 

 In some cases this has been owing to the folly of 

 some persons in the neighbourhood, who have per- 

 sisted in gathering the grasses for fuel. God has 

 given to the animals the instinct by which they 

 refuse to eat the mat-grass ; to man he gives the 

 higher faculty of reason, which should have taught 

 him to leave it untouched; yet let us not blame 

 ignorance, unless our consciences tell us that we 

 are doing all in our power to lessen it. With such 

 perseverance have the peasantry on some shores 

 of our island continued to uproot the grasses, un- 

 mindful of all but their own present convenience, 

 that an Act of Parliament was passed, rendering 

 the destruction of these grasses punishable by law. 



Burnet mentions several instances of the destruc- 

 tion of property caused by the incursion of sands 

 upon fertile regions. Among others, he informs 

 us that near Downham, in Suffolk, the sand-hills 

 have encroached five miles during the last century ; 

 and that in some parts of Scotland, hundreds of 

 acres have been entirely devastated. He also refers 

 to the well-known case of the Coubin estate, near 

 Fores, which was at one time worth three hundred 

 pounds per annum, but which has long been over- 

 whelmed by sand. This terrible calamity befel this 

 estate in 1769 ; and so rapid were the encroach- 

 ments of the sand, which came upon it in sweeping 

 heaps, that an apple-tree which grew there, was, in 

 the course of the season, so buried as that nothing 

 but the summit remained visible. This catastrophe 

 was occasioned by the reckless pulling up by the 

 roots, of a quantity of mat-grass, when some trees 

 were cut down. 



The difficulty of describing the grasses without 



