BENEFITS OF PLANTING. 
515 
eminent lias, however, attempted the wooding of the steppes, and 
there are thriving plantations in the neighborhood of Odessa, 
where the soil is of a particularly loose and sandy character.* 
The trees best suited to this locality, and, as there is good rea¬ 
son to suppose, to sand plains in general, is the Ailanthus 
glandulosa , or Japan varnish tree.f The remarkable success 
which has crowned the experiments with the ailanthus at 
Odessa, will, no doubt, stimulate to similar trials elsewhere, 
and it seems not improbable that the arundo and the maritime 
pine, which have fixed so many thousand acres of drifting 
sands in Western Europe, will be, partially at least, superseded 
by the tamarisk and the varnish tree. 
Advantages of Reclaiming the Sands. 
If we consider the quantity of waste land which has been 
made productive by the planting of the sand hills and plains, 
and the extent of fertile soil, the number of villages and other 
human improvements, and the value of the harbors, which the 
same process has saved from being buried under the rolling 
dunes, and at last swallowed up forever by the invasions of the 
sea, we shall be inclined to rank Bremontier and Beventlov 
among the greatest benefactors of their race. "W ith the excep- 
* According to Hohenstein, Der Wald , pp. 228, 229, an extensive plan¬ 
tation of pines—a tree new to Southern Russia—was commenced in 1842, 
on the barren and sandy banks of the Ingula, near Elisahethgrod, and has 
met with very flattering success. Other experiments in sylviculture at dif¬ 
ferent points on the steppes promise valuable results. 
f “ Sixteen years ago,” says an Odessa landholder, “ I attempted to fix 
the sand of the steppes, which covers the rocky ground to the depth of a 
foot, and forms moving hillocks with every change of wind. I tried 
acacias and pines in vain ; nothing would grow in such a soil. At length 
r planted the varnish tree, or ailanthus , which succeeded completely in 
vinding the sand.” This result encouraged the proprietor to extend his 
plantations over both dunes and sand steppes, and in the course of sixteen 
years this rapidly growing tree had formed real forests. Other landowners 
have imitated his example with great advantage.— Rentsch, Der Wald , p. 
44, 45. 
