There are often serious objections to extensive forest planting on soils capable of being otherwise made productive, but they do not apply to sand wastes, which, until covered by woods, are not only a useless incumbrance, but a source of serious danger to all human improvements in the neighborhood of them.
[470] Boitel, Mise en valeur des Terres pauvres par le Pin maritime, pp. 212, 218.
[471] See Appendix, No. .
[472] For details, consult Andresen, Om Klitformationen, pp. 223, 236.
[473] When the deposit is not very deep, and the adjacent land lying to the leeward of the prevailing winds is covered with water, or otherwise worthless, the surface is sometimes freed from the drifts by repeated harrowings, which loosen the sand, so that the wind takes it up and transports it to grounds where accumulations of it are less injurious.
[474] Travels and Researches in Chaldæa, chap. ix.
[475] Études Forestières, p. 253.
[476] Lavergne, Économie Rurale de la France, p. 300, estimates the area of the Landes of Gascony at 700,000 hectares, or about 1,700,000 acres. The same author states (p. 304), that when the Moors were driven from Spain by the blind cupidity and brutal intolerance of the age, they demanded permission to establish themselves in this desert; but political and religious prejudices prevented the granting of this liberty. At this period the Moors were a far more cultivated people than their Christian persecutors, and they had carried many arts, that of agriculture especially, to a higher pitch than any other European nation. But France was not wise enough to accept what Spain had cast out, and the Landes remained a waste for three centuries longer. See Appendix, [No. 64].
The forest of Fontainebleau, which contains above 40,000 acres, is not a plain, but its soil is composed almost wholly of sand, interspersed with ledges of rock. The sand forms not less than ninety-eight per cent. of the earth, and, as it is almost without water, it would be a drifting desert but for the artificial propagation of forest trees upon it.
[477] Économie Rurale de la Belgique, par Emile de Laveleye, Revue des Deux Mondes, Juin, 1861, pp. 617-644.