Ted ELEMENTARY FORESTRY. 
place has been broken. Along the shore of New Jerscy, at 
Seven Mile Beach, there is a dune which is traveling inward at 
the rate of perhaps fifteen fect per year, and is destroying quite 
a growth of forest trees. This dune is thirty or forty feet high, 
—as high as the trees, 
and as the prevailing strong winds are 
from the east, its tendency is always inland. There are other 
notable sand dunes at Provincetown, on Cape Cod, Mass., which 
have been fixed in place by judicious planting. 
In some parts of Europe, notably in Gascony, France, dunes 
have destroyed an immense amount of territory in former ages. 
Whole villages have at times been gradually wiped out by the 
encroaching dunes. The sand is so fine and so easily moved 
by the wind that there is very little chance for any vegetation to 
grow on it, and it 1s only in recent times that methods have 
been successfully adopted to hold it in place. 
The Most Improved Way of Checking Sand Dunes 
is to first make a windbreak of boards or poles which may be 
pulled up as the sand drifts up onto them. These are used tem- 
porarily to afford an opportunity of getting vegetable growth 
started. As a rule the vegetable growth which has been most 
successlully used for fixing sand dunes is that of plants that 
grow naturally in such places. Such species are generally those 
that throw out long creeping stems at or just below the surface 
of the ground, and also such as are capable of healthy growth 
even when half buried by encroaching sand. We have a number 
of native species that are adapted to this purpose, among which 
are the Sand Reed, the Sand Cherry, several varieties of Wil- 
lows, and Quack Grass. Where these once gain a foothold upon 
a sand dune they hold it better than would be possible by arti- 
ncial means. In protecting such land it is generally best to dig 
up clumps of these grasses, or use long willow cuttings, and set 
them in place in a wet time. 
In some sections along the Great Lakes the sand is now held 
in place by the natural covering of weeds and shrubs, but should 
this be removed and the land broken up there would be much 
trouble in getting it again fixed in place. Such is the case along 
the southern shore of Lake Michigan. 
