REBOISEMENT. 121 



drifts might extend to the Vistula, fall into it, and 

 thereby occasion a most disastrous sanding-up of the river, 

 whereby the navigable course might come to be com- 

 pletely blocked. 



' One of the burghers of Danzig, Soeren-Bioern, a Dane 

 by birth, kept alleging and repeating that in his native 

 country extensive stretches of sand dunes had been bound 

 fast by planting them with sand grasses ; and he recom- 

 mended, as did Titius years before, the planting of 

 Arundo arenaria, and the subsequent formation of pasture 

 grounds, and the planting of different kinds of trees. 



' In the year 1795 there was entrusted to him the fixa- 

 tion of a stretch of dunes a quarter of a German mile — 

 more than one English mile — long, and 140 klafters or 

 fathoms broad, which was threatening the Vistula in the 

 direction of Neufaehr. In the following year he executed 

 this work to the general satisfaction, and thereupon he 

 was installed Plantagen-Inspector, and conducted till his 

 death in 1819 the Dunenbauten, or works for the arrest of 

 the drift sands on the Danzig links. 



* The active energy and enterprise of Bioern did not 

 limit itself to this local undertaking, but from 1799 to 

 1802 he was repeatedly consulted by the Konigsberg 

 Chamber in regard to the treatment of the dunes to the 

 north of that town on the Lochstaedt and the Friesland [?] 

 and Courland Hnks. 



' From the professional opinion given by him, and the 

 printed documents connected therewith, it is manifest that 

 Bioern continued to advocate the planting offences designed 

 to arrest the sand thrown up from the sea. These, however, 

 were not to be above 1^ feet high, and were to be such as 

 might be formed of sunk bushes, in no case planted very 

 thickly, that they might not fail of their object, nor 

 be destroyed by storms. A series of such fences, one 

 behind another, were to be planted. After these were 

 sanded up, and a gentle slope was formed in front of them, 

 those slopes were to be sown with sand grasses — these 

 plants being the only ones which could resist the action of 



