196 



FOKEIGN OFFICE REPORTS. 



[Sept. 1895. 



lie within that bend, and they are composed of a soil that,, 

 unfertilised, is of absolutely no agricultural value. Geologically, 

 it is a quaternary or modern deposit of sand and clay, which 

 together have an average thickness throughout the district of 

 from 60 to 70 feet. In parts, the clay appears on the surface,, 

 but over the greater portion of its area the sand lies with 

 some thickness upon a stiff impermeable clay. Left alone it 

 will produce nothing of value. It is a countiy of sand and 

 heather, broken up by innumerable ponds and marshy tracts a& 

 unhealthy as they are unprofitable. Immense efforts have beea 

 made for 40 years past to reclaim these lands by planting the 

 sandy tracts with pines, by draining the stagnant surface waters,, 

 and by the transport thither, for intermixture with the sand, of 

 a calcareous marl, which is obtained from the northern slopes 

 of the Sancerrois Hills that limit this district on the south-east. 

 Nearly 200,000 acres have been turned into pine forest ; drainage 

 of stagnant waters and proper irrigation have made good pasture 

 land of much that lies in proximity to the rivers running through 

 the district — the Cosson, the Beuvron, and the Sauldre. But 

 nothing could have been done to fit the land for the culture of 

 cereals and other more profitable products had not the Canal 

 de Sauldre been cut right into the heart of the district from a 

 more favoured country yielding the calcareous elements of 

 which the soil of the Sologne was wholly deprived. For 40 

 years the transport of " marne," or calcareous marl, has gone 

 steadily on, and it is now computed that over 1,000,000 tons of 

 this fertiliser have been carried by the canal and distributed over 

 the poorer adjacent lands. The canal has been the main agent in 

 the transformation of the country to a distance of 10 or 12 miles 

 from its banks. 



The iDfluence of the canal upon the agriculture of the district 

 is such that the selling value of land increases or decreases as it 

 approaches or recedes from the banks of the canal, that is, from 

 the means of obtaining at a low cost of transport the " improve- 

 ments " of which, from the poverty of the soil, it stands in need. 

 It seems that the inhabitants of the district now demand an 

 extension of the canal to the banks of the Loire and the Cher^ 

 so that they may be put into communication by water with the 

 navigable portions of those rivers. So far the chief function of 

 the canal has been to bring them the fertilisers by which their 

 land has been reclaimed ; what they ask for now is its extension 

 to assist them to carry off and find markets for its heavier 

 products. 



[Foreign Office Report, Miscellaneous Series, No. 366. 

 Price Hid.] 



