Tea VERS. — 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 wilhngly 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 



