TOTAL EXTENT OF DUNES. 
507 
it is doubtful whether this tree would be able to resist the win¬ 
ter on the dunes of Massachusetts. Probably the pitch pine of 
the Northern States, in conjunction with some of the American 
oaks, birches, and poplars, and especially the robinia or locust, 
would prove very suitable to be employed on the sand hills of 
Cape Cod and Long Island. The ailantlius, now coming into 
notice as a sand-loving tree, may, perhaps, serve a better pur¬ 
pose than any of them. 
Extent of Dunes in Europe. 
The dunes of Denmark, as we have seen, cover an area of 
two hundred and sixty square miles, or one hundred and 
sixty-six thousand acres; those of the Prussian coast are 
vaguely estimated at from eighty-five to one hundred and ten 
thousand acres; those of Holland at one hundred and forty 
thousand acres; * those of Gascony at about three hundred 
thousand acres.f I do not find any estimate of their extent in 
other provinces of France, in the duchies of Schleswig and 
Holstein, or in the Baltic provinces of Russia, but it is probable 
that the entire quantity of dune land upon the eastern shores 
of the Atlantic and the Baltic does not fall much short of a 
million of acres.:[ This vast deposit of sea sand extends along 
* 
* Andresen, Om Rlitformationen, pp. 78, 262, 275. 
t Laval, Memoire sur les Dunes du Oolfe de Gascogne, Annales des Ponts 
et Chaussees , 1847, 2me s6mestre, p. 261. 
1 There are extensive ranges of dunes on various parts of the coasts of 
the British Islands, but I find no estimate of their area. Pannewitz (An- 
leitung zum Anbau der Sandfldchen ), as cited by Andresen (Om Klitfor- 
mationen, p. 45), states that the drifting sands of Europe, including, of 
course, sand plains as well as dunes, cover an extent of 21,000 square miles. 
This is, perhaps, an exaggeration, though there is, undoubtedly, much more 
desert land of this description on the European continent than has been 
generally supposed. There is no question that most of this waste is capa¬ 
ble of reclamation by simple planting, and no mode of physical improve¬ 
ment is better worth the attention of civilized Governments than this. 
There are often serious objections to extensive forest planting on soils 
capable of being otherwise made productive, but they do not apply to sand 
