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Travers.—On the Reclamation of Sand Dunes. 91 
King Frederick William the First, however, wanted money, and a certain 
Herr Von Korff promised to provide it for him without loan or taxes, if he 
could be allowed to remove something quite useless, He thinned out the 
forests of Prussia, which then, indeed, possessed little pecuniary value, but 
he felled the entire woods of the Frische Nebrung, so far as they lay within 
the Prussian territory. The financial operation was a success. The king 
had money, but, in the elementary operation which resulted from it, the 
‘State received irreparable injury. The sea winds rush over the bared hills ; 
the Frische Haff is half choked with sand ; the channel between Elbing, the 
sea, and Konigsborg is endangered, and the fisheries in the Haff injured. 
The operation of Herr von Korff brought the king 200,000 thalers. The 
State would now willingly expend millions to restore the forests again.” 
It has been proved, however, that where man and cattle and burrowing 
animals have been excluded from the surfaces of dunes, these have gradually 
become clothed with various species of plants and finally covered with 
trees, leading to the assumption, that wherever dunes are found in a bare 
condition, it is to be attributed to man’s interference, either direct or 
indirect, with the natural operations under which they would become and 
remain covered. It has been found, moreover, that dunes begin to protect 
themselves very soon after human trespassers and grazing animals have 
been excluded from them, herbaceous and arborescent plants (of which 
upwards of three hundred species are known to flourish in such habitats) 
speedily fixing themselves in the depressions and thence extending to 
the surfaces of the sandhills. To quote the words of an author on this 
subject: “ Every seed that sprouts binds a little of the sand, and gives 
shelter and food for the growth of others, and a few favourable seasons 
suffice to cover the greater portion of the surface with a net-work of vegeta- 
tion which almost effectually prevents the motion of the sand.” Those who 
have observed the rapid spread of the toi (Arundo conspicua), amongst the 
sand dunes on our West Coast (especially where they are not occupied for 
depasturing purposes), will have seen an example of this natural operation, 
and one, too, which points to a ready and simple means for preventing the 
further inland motion of these sands. This plant by the large amount of 
shade which it makes, and the protection it affords to the surface from the 
drying action of the wind, would materially assist in promoting the growth 
of more useful plants whenever it may be deemed advisable to adopt any 
system of artificial reclamation. 
In the latter part of the last century, simultaneous active steps were 
taken in Denmark, in Prussia, in the Netherlands, and on the west coast of 
France, for the protection of the surfaces of the dunes in those countries, © 
and for rendering them in some degree valuable, and most satisfactory 
