REPORT ON FORESTS. 307 



" A man," says Grandjean, "was forced to take some of this 

 sand for a debt. He became a millionaire later by selling it in 

 small parcels." The first summer the visitors lived in the resin 

 cabins ; now every luxury is afforded to the two hundred thou- 

 sand tourists who come there every year. 



To-day it is a health resort. It is covered with pines and is 

 prosperoiis. Although a few severe fires* occur now and then, 

 and owing to a lack of roads or other sufficient means of trans- 

 portation all the wood is not sold, nowhere in the world, 

 however, are the following industries more extensively and scien- 

 tifically developed : Collection and manufacture of naval stores, 

 the impregnation of wood with preservatives, and oyster culture. 

 They have also demonstrated that there is no better way of 

 fixing shifting sands, of draining swamps and removing pesti- 

 lence than by forest-planting. 



Destroy completely the forest which covers the Coastal Plain 

 of Eastern America and it will become a bed of shifting barren 

 sand, in places swampy, pestilential, unproductive, unsightly 

 and unfit for habitation, although capable of producing under 

 forest management an abundance of excellent timber and naval 

 stores forever. I^arge areas of the Coastal Plain of America are 

 rapidly approaching the former condition of the Landes of 

 Gascony. 



The eastern coast of America, under proper management, is 

 in this respect at least, capable of almost limitless prospects. 

 The timber of the short-leaf, long-leaf, old-field and Cuban-pines 

 finds a market even in Europe. Now that yellow-pine (or what 

 they call pitch-pine in Europe) has won a reputation in other 

 countries, it is only good business to see that the supply may not 

 run short, but be more than sufficient for all possible future 

 demands. Besides, there is and, perhaps, always will be more 

 wood used per capita in America than elsewhere in the world. 

 Just as Italy is the land of masons, America is the land of wood- 



* After several fires in the Montagne Noir comes the aanouncement of fire in the Landes, spreading 

 from the region of Laborheyre and Parentis-emBom to Mimizan over thousands of hectares of pine-lands 

 An innocent man amused himself burning the herbage in the midst of a country torrified by the heat of 

 dog-days near forests of pine. Hatred and ill-will incited criminal hands to imitate this example. The 

 fire traversed thousands of hectares of forest, as in America, destroying everything in its way. It is 

 astonishing, considering the slight attention accorded to the laws or restrictive regulations, that such 

 disasters should not have occurred earlier, during the great heat of August. At last it rains ! — Revue des 

 Eaux et Forets, (September, X898.) 



