146 NATURAL HISTORY OF MARITIME PINE. 



Ian3.es the importance of creating a plantation of the maritime pine ; 

 and yet, for all that, it may be said that but a few years separate 

 us from the time when the Landes of Gascony, veritable French 

 Savannahs, presented to the eye of the saddened traveller only a 

 picture of desolation and of death. Far as his eye could reach he 

 could see only heart-sickening monotony and gloom ; and it seemed 

 to him as if on this bare and naked land sterile Nature had cast her 

 heavy curse. 



"While the whole of France elsewhere expanded herself under 

 the rays of progress, the Landes remained there — always uncultivated 

 and unproductive — always immersed in their unmeasured sadness — 

 giving shade in the brilliant picture of the fruitful conquests of 

 civilisation, and presenting to all men the great and gruesome 

 spectacle of a fatal neglect ; for, as Viscount Izarn-Freissinet remarks, 

 in his Coup d'oeil sur les Landes de Gascogne — ' parce que tout y etait 

 efc faire, rien n'y a et% fait.' Because everything in connection with 

 it had to be done — nothing at all in connection with it has been done. 



" Such neglect and such abandonment of the land could not last 

 always. There came at length the day when societies were formed 

 for the clearing and cultivation of these lanles. But those who 

 took the direction of the measures to be adopted were mainly imbued 

 with notions essentially and exclusively agricultural. They wished to 

 establish on a grand scale the culture of vegetables which the 

 geological conditions of our sand-wastes could not support. They 

 were foiled. Advancing with giant steps they landed themselves 

 the more precipitately in ruin, and they were forced to stop, buried 

 as they were under the weight of failure, so much the more over- 

 whelming that it was unexpected. 



" Behold then once more our landes abandoned and uncultivated 

 and alone in their immensity ; they seemed to be for the future 

 doomed to everlasting sterility. 



" But if there had been a want of success it was the fault of man, 

 not of the landes. To change all that, it was only necessary to act 

 more wisely. This has been done, and now it has come about that 

 the four hundred thousand hectares of these desolate landes have 

 become four hundred thousand hectares of young and vigorous 

 forests. Almost everywhere the plough has produced its furrows, 

 and the hand of man has stocked these savage deserts with maritime 

 pines, which will become for the country a fruitful source of wealth, 

 and supply some day the wants of the whole of France. 



" Writings on the maritime pine were for a time quite the rage, 



