308 CLIMA TIC CHANGES IN THE PRAIRIE REGION. 



not limited to a few species, but exhibit all the varieties necessary to meet the re- 

 quirements of the vast civilization that is gradually investing that region, and the 

 difficult experiment of transplanting exotics to maintain forest growths is not an 

 obstacle to the possibilities of timber culture. The immigrant has only to avail 

 himself of the seeds, or young shoots, which he finds at his hands, to commence 

 his tree plantation; and it is perhaps to this fact that such a large area is already 

 devoted to timber. 



European nations have awakened to the importance of the preservation of 

 existing forests and the creation of new forests as an agency in the amelioration 

 of climate, and rigid laws have been enacted and are in operation to-day in France, 

 Germany and Russia. Not only are these laws applicable to the public domain 

 in those countries, but their effect reaches the estates of individuals, so thoroughly 

 alive to the relations which forests maintain to climate are the authorities. 



Institutions devoted entirely to scientific forest culture have been established 

 at more than a dozen places in Germany, and in France over four thousand 

 salaried officers are attached to the "Bureau Central de'l Administration General 

 des Forets." In these institutions the professors are persons of the highest schol- 

 arship. Lectures are regularly delivered on all the coordinate branches of forest 

 culture : the principles of forests, measurement of forests, forest nursery, vegeta- 

 ble physiology, forest botany, forest microscopy, forest zoology and entomology ; 

 in short everything which relates to the subject in its minutest details. In France 

 the "Gardes Genevare" number nearly five thousand, who perform the work of 

 the public forests under the direction of the central office in Paris. 



The Russian government has attempted the difficult problem of extending for- 

 est growth over the steppes, a region of drifty sands, and has met with perfect suc- 

 cess, as the many thriving forests of timber reported in existence there attest. 



The majority of the planted forests of Europe are in a region whose soil is in- 

 finitely inferior to that of the poorest of the western plains. In the sandy tracts 

 of Northern Germany, "from Berlin to the Baltic and the German Ocean, in- 

 cluding the Prussian provinces of East and West Prussia, Pomerania, Mecklen- 

 burg-Schwerin and Mark Brandenburg and the kingdom of Hanover, are in many 

 places covered with deep sand, lying upon the surface so loose as to be moved 

 about by the action of the wind like the billows of the sea." In this really des- 

 ert-aspect region are found the finest artificial forests in the world. 



In France, on the western coast, are immense sand hills, sometimes attain- 

 ing a height of three hundred feet, and here, as well as on the sand dunes of 

 Gascony, dense forests have been planted, which stand in a soil of pure sand, but 

 which are growing luxuriantly, and are reclaiming a region which had always 

 heretofore been regarded as hopelessly sterile. 



One authority says : "The dune lands and sand plains of that country, esti- 

 mated as equal to about twice the area of Maryland, or as covering more than 

 thirteen million acres, most of them naturally as arid as the Llano Estacado of 

 Northwestern Texas, are being everywhere brought under cultivation by planting 

 them with pine." 



