enterprise, and of the reclaimed land brought under annual culture. And as regards the charcoal manufactured, it is remarked by M. Boitel:

"This would evidently be a source of possible wealth if the forests were easily accessible, but they are not so as yet at least in the Dunes, and will not be so until the newly planted trees arrive at a valuable age.

"Good roads are being made at present, and in future the maritime pine may be cultivated for the sake of its timber as well as for its resin.

"The culture of the maritime pine has conferred invaluable benefits. A considerable extent of low lying marshy land has been brought in, once a focus of pestilence which decimated the population. It has made it healthy and productive, and has introduced industry and comfort into districts which seemed doomed to misery. The maritime pine has also arrested the advance of the Dunes and prevented them from overwhelming houses and arable land. Its importance must increase. In the department of the Landes alone, the extent already planted is more than 500,000 hectares. In the Gironde there is almost as much, and very soon barren wastes and sandy dunes will be things of the past."

CHAPTER VII.

SYLVICULTURE ON THE LANDES OF LA SOLOGNE.

BESIDES the Landes of Gascony and the Landes of the Gironde which are near the coast, we meet with Landes in inland situations in France, arid regions, supporting but a sparse population, being covered with heaths, and whins, and brooms, and other plants, which take possession of waste and uncultivated lands, and yield little nutriment for the support of man. Such are the Landes of La Sologne, of which mention has been made in connection with details given of the manufacture of charcoal; such also are the Landes of Le Brenne, and of Le Limousin-with solitudes broken only by the visits of poor shepherds tending or searching for their sheep, contrasting strangely with the animation and bustle prevailing in districts adjacent.

In these we meet with another phase of sand dunes and drifting sands, and of the culture of the maritime pine.

There, as in many other places elsewhere, the growth of the maritime pine is less luxuriant than it is in the district to which our attention has hitherto been given.

In the Landes of the Gironde the maritime pine propagates itself by natural reproduction by self-sown seeds. There, all conditions are peculiarly favourable to its growth. It is otherwise in the Department of Maine and in La Sologne.

In Sologne it is very rarely the case that a pinery is reproduced by self-sown seed. In the first place the trees never attain to great age, and they never furnish aught but a small quantity of seed. In the second place a repeuplement, when it does make its appearance, soon perishes under a dense covering of timber trees, which deprives it of air and light. In fine, young saplings, which may have withstood the injurious effects of too dense a shade, become oft-times the prey of flocks of sheep, which the people have the bad custom to lead into pineries, from which they should be strictly excluded.

Of the Landes of La Sologne and of La Brenne, it has been remarked that they are less known than are those of Gascony, because they do not lie upon the old great lines of communication.

They were once covered with a forest 1,200,000 acres in extent, but this having been cleared away, they have relapsed into what was their earlier condition, a barren sand waste, diversified by marsh land, and marshes in abundance.

In writing of the "Desert World," M. Mangin, or his translator into English, introducing his subject, says, "To those whose imaginations have been kindled by glowing pictures of the African Sahara and the Arabian wilderness, it will be, perhaps, a matter of surprise to learn that even fertile and civilised Europe includes within her boundaries regions which are scarcely less cheerless or desolate, though happily of far inferior extent.

"In France, so richly cultivated, so laborious, and so blessed by genial Nature as she is, there are, nevertheless, a few districts where her sons may wholly forget-nay, almost disbelieve in the existence of her cities stirring with the hum of men,' her vineyards and her gardens, her grassy pastures, her prolific meadows, her well ordered highways, and those 'iron roads' which are the incessant channels of such restless energy, movement, and vigorous life."

And after describing mountain solitudes in the gigantic ranges of the Jura, the Vosges, and the Cevennes; the first an outlying spur of the great Alpine system, and situated on the border of Switzerland; the second separating the valley of the Rhine from that of the Moselle; the last separating the valley of the Loire from that of the basin of the Rhone, he goes on to reckon among the uncultivated regions of France, the marshes of the Bresse of Forez, and, with others, those of the Sologne.

The Landes or heaths of the Sologne appear as a desert surrounded by a magnificent girdle of cultivated land, fully developed in the fertile valleys of the Loire and the Cher. And, as is the case in Gascony, the heath is surrounded on all sides by valleys, vineyards, and gardens, in the highest state of cultivation. While in Corsica, another sandy desert, the orange, the olive, and the chesnut adorn spots surrounded with maquis, veritable heaths, with this, as the only difference between them and the heaths of the Sologne, that under that southern climate the whins and the meagre heaths are replaced by the arbutus, the myrtle, arborescent heaths, cistuses, and lentisques.

In all of the places mentioned, in Sologne, in Brenne, and in Gascony, it is not rare to see farms of from 1,500 to 2,000 hectares, in round numbers, 4,000 and 5,000 acres, with only from 150 to 200

hectares under cultivation; and in Corsica nine-tenths of the island are covered by the maquis, or heaths. In Gascony, to one who would urge the destruction of the heath, the agriculturist of Chalosse, or of Bearn would reply-No heath, no maize; exactly, as elsewhere, one would say-No dung, no wheat. And in that climate it is impossible to carry out a rational and profitable culture excepting on the bases of two hectares of heath for one under culture.

And there, by students of agricultural economy, it is deemed proper to seek the improvement of the poorer land by rearing trees upon it, instead of attempting to introduce at once the appliances of what is known as high farming. But even for woods the land here requires preparation, and the preparation which is found to be most appropriate is the culture of certain cereals, alternating with a growth of the maritime pine, without which it would be hazardous to attempt the growth of the Scots fir, the Corsican pine, and the Norway fir, and the oak, and the birch, all of which have been cultivated here with the best results.

But the land improver must wait many years before he can say whether the land will bear the other coniferae; and the oak, and other broad-leaved trees, it is alleged grow but slowly and require shelter. And even when the time has come to attempt the growth of such, it is not uncommon to grow a mixture of the maritime pine with the other coniferae, the oak, the birch, and the chesnut; as, should the others fail, it at least will grow ; and if all succeed it is easy to sacrifice any one kind for the promotion of the growth of the others; and in any case it will give shelter to those which might suffer from frost, and it will yield marketable products, while the oak and the birch are still too young to be subjected to exploitation.

In Sologne we have a well-defined geological district, about 440,000 hectares, or above a million of acres in extent. The superficial strata have been designated by geologists specifically as the Sands and Clays of the Sologne, a formation reckoned among the upper layers of the middle range of the tertiary period.

It may be represented, says Boitel in his volume entitled "Mise en valeur des Terres Pauvres par le Pin Maritime," as a vast calcareous basin, filled by alternate deposits of sand and of clay. This basin, the wall of which crops out at a great many points along the circumference of La Sologne, presents naturally different depths at different localities.

In two borings, within yards of each other, at Savigny (Loiret)

we have in one a depth of 270 feet, and the other only 226 feet; and a third at Vannes (Loiret), we have only 168 feet. And owing to accidental disturbances, and to the general inclination of the surface from east to west, one and another of the layers of which the deposit consists appear on the surface with a very great variation in breadth, giving rise to superficial ground of silicious sand, of clay, and of those elements associated in different proportions; and the sub-soil, which may be considered the true soil of the trees, presents modifications not less important in character and in depth.

All the layers which appear have, as a common character, that they are poor in lime and in fertilizing substances.

"In Sologne," says Boitel, "the lack of lime, the natural sterility of the country, the ignorance of those who exploit its products, the want of capital, the deficiency of labour, the undivided state of the property, whether held by communes or by individuals, and the striking ruin of some inexperienced innovators, are the main obstacles which have retarded the utilisation and improvement of the greater part of the uncultivated land."

Following out the natural division of the layers into sandy, clayey, and mixed lands, he says of these :

Damp does not

Sandy silicious soil is formed of sand, more or less coarse, and more or less white; it is light and easily worked. make it cohere, or change it into a thick oily paste. If it lies on an impermeable clay bed, without any fall, it becomes, in winter, saturated with water, and almost inaccessible to animals, who would sink into it up to their chests.

"But if there is a slight declivity it drains itself of its own accord, and is liable to become too dry in summer. Farmers sow it only with rye and buckwheat; turnips and red clover also succeed pretty well. In farms where no boisement, or planting with trees, has taken place for fifty years, it is often still arable. Old fashioned farmers prefer it, because it is easily worked, and because the effect of manure soon becomes apparent on the buckwheat and rye.

"Intelligent farmers, on the contrary, dislike it because of its rapid exhaustion, and because old manure can never be stored up in it, so as to yield a good return. Even supposing that lime could be had, it would be unsuitable for wheat and oats, it being poor in fertilizing substances, and because these cereals would suffer from drought before coming to maturity. Farmers subject these sandy soils to a fallow of lengthened duration; it then becomes covered with a whitish hair-grass (aira canescens), with a species of woodruff