PINE PLANTATIONS ON THE SAND- 

 WASTES OF FRANCE. 



CHAPTER I. 



Appearances Pebsbnted by Plantations on Drift Sands. 



Within the last eighty years much has been accomplished in the 

 arresting of Drift Sand, and in utilising Sand Wastes by a judicious 

 combination of sylviculture and agriculture. 



" A spectator placed on the famous bell tower of the cathedral of 

 Antwerp," says Baude in an article in the Hevue des Deux Mondes, 

 January, 1859, one of an interesting series of articles entitled Les 

 Cotes de la Manche, " saw not long since on the opposite side of the 

 Schelde only a vast desert plain ; now he sees a forest, the limits of 

 which are confounded with the horizon. Let him enter within its 

 shades. The supposed forest is but a system of regular rows of trees, 

 the oldest of which is not yet forty years of age. These plantations 

 have ameliorated the climate, which had doomed to sterility the soil 

 where they are planted ; while the tempest is violently agitating their 

 tops, the air a little below is still, and sands far more barren than 

 the plateau of La Hague have been formed under their protection 

 into fertile fields." 



A similar description of landscape eflfects, produced by the planting 

 of the Landes of the Gironde in Gascony with pines occurs in Weld's 

 tour through the Pyrenees. 



Writing of this district he says : — " Opposite to Blaye, and extend- 

 ing for a considerable distance up and down the Gironde, is the 

 M6doc district, unlovely in appearance, being a vast plain composed 

 of stones and sand, the deposit probably of the river in long past 

 ages. But no smiling valley, 



' Deep meadowed, hajspy, fair with orchard lawns, 

 And bowery hollows crown'd with summer sea,' 



is so fruitful as is this seeming waste : for it is the nursing mother 

 of those vines, which, stunted though they be, produce the far. 



