PREFACE.

THE preparation of this volume for the press was undertaken in consequence of a statement in the Standard and Mail, a Capetown paper, of the 22nd July, 1876, to the effect that in the estimates submitted to Parliament £1,000 had been put down for the Cape Flats, it was supposed with a view to its being employed in carrying out planting operations as a means of reclaiming the sandy tracts beyond Salt River.

In view of the success which has followed the planting of the Landes of Gascony and the Gironde with the maritime pine, it might seem that nothing now can be required in order to arrest and utilise driftsands, but to plant them judiciously with that tree. But, happily, I may say, the failure of such plantations on the Landes of La Sologne comes to warn us against any such rash generalisation. And the observation of sand downs in Britain, and sand plains elsewhere, show that herbs, carices, reeds, and grasses have operated extensively in arresting effectually, and, according to their measures, in utilising what otherwise would have been barren and destructive sandwastes.

Looking at the subject generally, all that I consider established by the pine plantations on the sand-wastes of France is the practicability of arresting and utilising sand-drifts by means of plantations of trees. What has been accomplished there we may legitimately infer may be effected elsewhere, not necessarily by the same means, but by means as appropriate, if they can be discovered. But while this may be all that is established there is much more suggested.

And still more might be found to be suggested by a study of the whole of the sand-wastes of Europe, and of the natural history of sand, its composition, its formation, and its aggregation on the shore, in dunes, in drifts, in sand-wastes, and in sand plains, and of the various genera and species of plants growing upon it, and of planta

tions of broad-leaved trees which have succeeded in other conditionsthe poplar, the willow, and the aspen, the elm, the elder, the ash, the acacia, the oak, the hazel, and the dogwood, the birch, and the wild pear. There has been prepared a twin volume, in which these subjects have been discussed.

This volume was originally compiled in view of what seemed to be required at the Cape of Good Hope. It has been revised, and printed now, only as a contribution towards a renewed enterprise, to arrest and utilise sand-wastes which stretch from Table Mountain to the Hottentot Holland Mountains; and additional information is forthcoming if it should be desired.

Appended to reports of the Colonial Botanist for 1864 is a letter on grasses adapted to arrest drifting sand (pp. 99–102), and appended to report of the Colonial Botanist for 1865 is a letter on the arrest of drifting sand, and planting the same with trees (pp. 83–93).

HADDINGTON, 10th April, 1878.

PINE PLANTATIONS ON THE SAND

WASTES OF FRANCE.

CHAPTER I.

APPEARANCES PRESENTED BY PLANTATIONS ON DRIFT SANDS.

WITHIN the last eighty years much has been accomplished in the arresting of Drift Sand, and in utilising Sand Wastes by a judicious combination of sylviculture and agriculture.

"A spectator placed on the famous bell tower of the cathedral of Antwerp," says Baude in an article in the Revue des Deux Mondes, January, 1859, one of an interesting series of articles entitled Les Cotes de la Manche, "saw not long since on the opposite side of the Schelde only a vast desert plain; now he sees a forest, the limits of which are confounded with the horizon. Let him enter within its shades. The supposed forest is but a system of regular rows of trees, the oldest of which is not yet forty years of age. These plantations have ameliorated the climate, which had doomed to sterility the soil where they are planted; while the tempest is violently agitating their tops, the air a little below is still, and sands far more barren than the plateau of La Hague have been formed under their protection into fertile fields."

A similar description of landscape effects, produced by the planting of the Landes of the Gironde in Gascony with pines occurs in Weld's tour through the Pyrenees.

Writing of this district he says:-" Opposite to Blaye, and extending for a considerable distance up and down the Gironde, is the Médoc district, unlovely in appearance, being a vast plain composed of stones and sand, the deposit probably of the river in long past ages. But no smiling valley,

'Deep meadowed, happy, fair with orchard lawns,

And bowery hollows crown'd with summer sea,'

is so fruitful as is this seeming waste: for it is the nursing mother of those vines, which, stunted though they be, produce the far

famed claret grape. Who, ignorant of these facts, would suppose that an acre of Médoc land is a fortune !"

Writing of Bourdeaux, the capital port of the district, he says:"Grand indeed is the water avenue to the great city of Bourdeaux. Flowing beneath the softly wooded heights of Floirac, the tawny Garonne, here upwards of 2,000 feet wide, sweeps in a semi-circle past handsome quays three miles long, bearing all kinds of crafts, from the jaunty felucca from the Mediterranean, to the stately Indiaman; for the tide at Bourdeaux, though the city is seventy miles from the sea, rises twenty feet. Looking at all this beauty and commercial grandeur, I thought of our Thames, and what it might be if properly embanked and provided with capacious quays.

"Long to be remembered is an afternoon which I spent at Floirac, where one of the great wine merchants resides. After an early dinner, consisting of many delicacies, we adjourned, ladies as well as gentlemen, to an arbour in the pleasure ground, situated at the edge of the wooded heights. Within the arbour a large table was covered with an endless variety of delicious fruits, all grown on the estate; and while we sat round these abundant products of the rich south, the distant views, which are of the most exquisite nature, were illumed by a sunset of great glory.

"On a day remarkable for an extra allowance of caloric-Bourdeaux is exceedingly hot in summer-I visited the far-famed claret vaults of Messrs Barton & Guestier. Oh, how delicious was the wine I tasted in these deliciously cool regions-tasted! no, drank; for it would have been nothing short of an insult to that rare old nestar to have acted according to the advice given when you enter the London Dock wine vaults-taste but do not swallow. Here, within the cool precincts of the cellars, if you have the good fortune to be favoured by being allowed to taste famous vintages, you will be made aware how little, how very little, the middle classes really know what good claret is. The stuff which, impudently assuming that name, is generally our potion at a dinner party, is no more like the prime first growth clarets of Médoc than sloe juice and brandy is genuine port; but when we remember that a hogshead of good claret, the produce of a first-rate vintage, frequently fetches a thousand francs on the spot, we, at least I, who am of the middle classes, can understand that the chance of making acquaintance with prime claret is very small. The more then, if you are a middle man, will you enjoy a tasting visit to the Bourdeaux claret vaults, and especially if you enter them after a lionising tour through streets baked with a temperature of about 90°