CULTIVATION AND PRESERVATION OF FORESTS. 345 
best law for afforesting mountains. From 1861-77 but 68,000 acres of mountain 
land were planted with trees, and further 3,700 acres turfed. The sum expended 
in those seventeen years was only £345,000, really an absurdly small amount 
for a country which has spent milliards on the improvement of Paris and other 
similar outlays, and which is on the point of expending other milliards on rail- 
ways the utility of which is at least problematical. Need we wonder that inunda- 
tions occur periodically, every time causing injury calculated by hundreds of 
millions ? 
The French law of afforestation already referred to, and passed in 1860, 
orders in its essential provisions that afforestation is to be promoted by public 
grants of seeds, young trees, money, and other means. Afforesting, if the state 
of the soil and other conditions make it appear necessary, may be made compul- 
sory. If landed proprietors, communes, and others interested should decline to 
undertake themselves a regulated system of afforestation, this may be effected by 
the State, which may take possession for this purpose of the land in question. If 
persons interested wish, after completed afforestation, to enter again into posses- 
sion of their soil, and consequently enter upon the enjoyment of the improve- 
ments effected by the State, they must repay to the latter the expenses incurred 
with interest, or cede instead half of the afforested soil. 
The solidification of dunes by means of the growth of grass and the planting 
of trees offers difficulties of another kind. The question here is to ‘‘fix” the 
sand hills and sand heaps, shifted and driven about by the waves like balls. The 
work must be very gradual. A whole series of dunes is marked out, the line 
being drawn, as near as possible, over their crests. The parting off is effected 
by means of a strong fencing over the crest of the dunes, toward which smaller 
cross fences lean herring-bone fashion. ‘The effect of this construction is the 
accumulation of ever increasing masses of sand in the places thus protected, 
which eventually form a bulwark for the space behind against the rush of the 
waves. The area thus inclosed is first planted with meadow grass, and next 
with coniferous trees, the latter being at first protected against sand drifts by 
means of brushwood. Sedges, broom, esparto grass also have been employed 
with advantage for first cultivation. The exhibition contained relief plans of the 
dune works and plantations of the dunes between the mouths of the Gironde and 
the Coubre. The soil reclaimed lies partly below the level of the sea, and 
amounts already to many thousand acres. Where, a hundred years ago, there was 
only a desolate and marshy expanse, there the eye now ranges over splendid 
forests, in which deciduous trees begin more and more to show themselves among 
firs and pines, while prosperous looking villages and large herds of cattle, gar- 
dens, and vineyards impart life toa landscape which was formerly a silent and 
dreary waste.— Zhe Builder. 
