PRACTICAL PAPERS—SANDY LAND. 
165 
Are these townships and counties valueless, and shall they 
be abandoned to wild beasts ? If not, how can they be man¬ 
aged so as to pay for the labor and means of enriching them, 
or covering them with an artificial soil, where they are defi¬ 
cient? 
The sandy lands may be classified into the high, dry ridges; 
the low, wet swamps, often submerged in water, beds of an¬ 
cient lakes, sloughs and fens; and the lands intermediate, where 
water is found on or near the surface in wet seasons, but which 
are dry during the heats of summer. Each of these will pro¬ 
duce very different crops, and must receive a different culture. 
First. —The dry ridges composed almost entirely of loose 
sands. These naturally produce shrub pines, Pinus banksiana , 
shrubby black oaks, Quercus tinctora and coccinea , blue-berries, 
vaccinium Pennsylvanicum , dwarf willows, dogwoods, and a few 
other bushes and coarse grasses, with other plants always found 
on sands. Here the decayed vegetation has produced a coat¬ 
ing of soil, so thin, that when the land is cleared of stumps 
and turned with the plow the vegetable matter is lost, and re¬ 
mains imperceptible to human eyes ever afterwards. When 
one or two crops are taken off, the land will no longer pay for 
the work bestowed on it, unless largely manured ; and finally 
under ordinary culture becomes a barren, drifting sand dune, 
and will produce nothing except some of the crops noticed 
below. 
The very best use to which this land could be put, would be 
to plant it with conifers, red or Norway pine, or pines from the 
Rocky mountains, European and American larch, Norway 
spruce and the Douglas spruce from the mountains. A slight 
mulching applied for the first three years, and keeping down 
other growths would be all the cultivation these trees would 
need until they required thinning. Such land is admirably 
adapted to the growth of the red and Rocky mountain pines, 
and the European larch; and in due time a large yield of tim¬ 
ber may be expected, returning a handsome remuneration for 
the outlay. These plantings might be so arranged as to pro- 
