98 MODERN FOBEST ECONOMY. 



quickly increasing height to which the fences were being 

 raised was seen to be in the highest degree demanding 

 of consideration. This was bringing ever nearer the danger 

 of a breaking through of the accumulating sand, which, 

 should it occur, would entail a fearful destruction of pro- 

 perty — 'one in no way less than if the dunes had been 

 left to advance as they were doing before this attempt at 

 the stoppage of them had been made. 

 . ' In this dilemma the Philosophical Society of Danzig 

 in 1768 offered a prize for the best answer to the question, 

 What are the most efficient and least costly means of pre- 

 venting the continuously progressing sanding up of the 

 Danzig links, and of preventing the further growth of the 

 sand dunes? 



'Titius, Professor of Natural History in Wittenberg, 

 who previously had been in Danzig, gained the prize. 

 Titius, in a treatise On the Restoration of the Woods on 

 the Coast, especially plantation of White Pine, as the only 

 means of effectually arresting the calamity, showed that 

 thus only could the sand be prevented from drifting inland. 

 First of all, there might be planted, with a view to giving 

 stability to the sand, the Arundo arenaria, which had done 

 good service in Denmark, in Zealand, and North Jutland ; 

 and subsequently trees might be planted along the sea- 

 shore in strips protected by fences. 



'The most intelligent suggestions of this prize essay, 

 however, did not yet obtain a practical application ; on the 

 contrary, they went on heaping fences upon fences on the 

 crests of the dunes, and by so doing brought the threatened 

 pine tree forests still more under the sand-drift by the 

 material which was thus collected. The necessary funds 

 required for this,' Herr Wessely adds sarcastically, ' were 

 given gratuitously by the inhabitants of the threatened 

 places ! 



' By the want of such fixity as may be imparted by a 

 covering of vegetation, and by the interlacing of the long 

 roots of trees, the dunes may prove an insufficient barrier 

 against even a deluge occasioned by inundation. 



