REPORT ON FORESTS. 309 
of the French in places where there is plenty of room and oppor- 
tunity is proverbial as in Canada. It is even so in the Landes, 
which, on being reclaimed, was equivalent to the addition of a 
new province or colony. 
The Banat Sand-Desert of Southern Hungary. 
Joseph Wessely, in his book entitled ‘Der Europdische Flug- 
sand und Seine Kultur,” gives an interesting description of the 
Banat Sand-Desert in Southern Hungary. This region is north 
of the city of Beegrade, which is on the opposite side of the 
river Danube, in Servia. This great sand-plain was once a lake- 
bottom before the Danube had worn a deep passage, called the 
Iron Gate, through the Transylvanian Alps. Even in historic 
times these shifting sands were covered with forests. In addi- 
tion to such records there are other evidences which indicate 
that the region was once forested. These are in the nature of 
buried beds of humus, lime caves, caused by lime-water settling 
in cavities of rotted tree-roots, and the names of places, as is 
often the case in treeless regions, indicate its former wooded 
nature. The Magyars, for instance, called this sand plain 
“Nyir” in their names, which signifies ‘‘ beech.” 
The soil was not sterile in the sense of lacking inorganic 
ingredients,* but was of such fine, soft, sandy nature that on 
being divested of its vegetal covering was easily shifted hither 
and thither by the wind. Reckless cutting for fuel, the collec- 
tion of sumac for tanning, and the browsing of many herds 
belonging to nomads soon despoiled even the few oases of vege- 
tation which existed within recent times. In spite of many 
efforts to reforest this region, 30,000 of the 70,660 jochen ¢ were 
bare desert. The greatest evil of all was the flocks and herds 
which wandered over this region eating the herbage, loosening 
the soil and exposing the sand to the action of the wind. In 
addition to these difficulties, there was a revolution in 1848, 
*® The sand of the fertile marl region of New Jersey is subject to drifting here and there. South of 
Philadelphia, from the Pennsylvania shore, it may be seen moving in clouds over the fields in New Jersey. 
The wind picks up the fine grains and leaves the coarse particles behind. This sand blast is, of course, 
very injurious to fields of young, tender crops. 
+“ Joch”’ is an old European land measure. It is the same as “ yoke,’’ and originally meant the 
amount of land a yoke of oxen could plough in a day. 
