470 
DUNES OF WESTERN EUROPE. 
tities of sand, in tlie form of banks, on that coast, its shores are 
proportionally more free from sand bills than some others of 
lesser extent. There are, however, very important exceptions. 
The action of the tide throws much sand upon some points of 
the New England coast, as well as upon the beaches of Long 
Island and other more southern shores, and here dunes resem¬ 
bling those of Europe are formed. There are also extensive 
ranges of dunes on the Pacific coast of the United States, and 
at San Francisco they border some of the streets of the city. 
The dunes of America are far older than her civilization, 
and the soil they threaten or protect possesses, in general, too 
little value to justify any great expenditure in measures for 
arresting their progress or preventing their destruction. 
Hence, great as is their extent and their geographical im¬ 
portance, they have, at present, no such intimate relations to 
human life as to render them objects of special interest in the 
point of view I am taking, and I do not know that the laws 
of their formation and motion have been made a subject of 
original investigation by any American observer. 
Dunes of Western Europe. 
Upon the western coast of Europe, on the contrary, the 
ravages occasioned by the movement of sand dunes, and the 
serious consequences often resulting from the destruction of 
them, have long engaged the earnest attention of governments 
and of scientific men, and for nearly a century persevering and 
systematic effort has been made to bring them under human 
control. The subject has been carefully studied in Denmark 
and the adjacent duchies, in Western Prussia, in the Nether¬ 
lands, and in France; and the experiments in the way of 
arresting the drifting of the dunes, and of securing them, and 
the lands they shelter, from the encroachments of the sea, have 
resulted in the adoption of a system of coast improvement sub¬ 
stantially the same in all these countries. The sands, like the 
forests, have now their special literature, and the volumes and 
memoirs, which describe them and the processes employed to 
