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 Southetn Hungary. 



Joseph Wessely, in his book entitled " Der Europaische 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 t 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 driftiDg 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. 



f *' 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. 



