USE OF DUNES. 
489 
land they cover, and the evils which result from their move¬ 
ment, are, upon the whole, a protective and beneficial agent, 
and their maintenance is an object of solicitude with the gov¬ 
ernments and people of the shores they protect.* 
Use of Dunes as a Barrier against the Sea. 
Although the sea throws up large quantities of sand on flat 
lee-shores, there are, as we have seen, many cases where it 
continually encroaches on those same shores and washes them 
away. At all points of the shallow ISTorth Sea where the 
agitation of the waves extends to the bottom, banks are form¬ 
ing and rolling eastward. Hence the sea sand tends to accu¬ 
mulate upon the coast of Schleswig-Holstein and Jutland, and 
were there no conflicting influences, the shore would rapidly 
extend itself westward. But the same waves which wash 
the sand to the coast undermine the beach they cover, and still 
more rapidly degrade the shore at points where it is too high 
to receive partial protection by the formation of dunes upon 
it. The earth of the coast is generally composed of particles 
finer, lighter, and more transportable by water than the sea 
sand. While, therefore, the billows raised by a heavy west 
wind may roll up and deposit along the beach thousands of 
tons of sand, the same waves may swallow up even a larger 
quantity of fine shore earth. This earth, with a portion of the 
sand, is swept off by northwardly and southwardly currents, 
and let fall at other points of the coast, or carried off, altogether, 
* “We must, therefore, not be surprised to see the people here deal as 
gingerly with their dunes, as if treading among eggs. He who is lucky 
enough to own a molehill of dune pets it affectionately, and spends his 
substance in cherishing and fattening it. That fair, fertile, rich province, 
the peninsula of Eiderstadt in the south of Friesland, has, on the point 
toward the sea, only a tiny row of dunes, some six miles long or so ; but 
the people talk of their fringe of sand hills as if it were a border set with 
pearls. They look upon it as their best defence against Neptune. They 
have connected it with their system of dikes, aud for years have kept sen¬ 
tries posted to protect it against wanton injury.”— J. G. Kohl, Lie Inseln 
u. Marschen Schleswig-Holsteins, ii, p. 115. 
