Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 September 1895 — To Prevent Drifting Sands. [ARTICLE]

To Prevent Drifting Sands.

Some years ago the Federal Government expended $60,000 in planting beach grass along the ocean side of the tip of Cape Cod. in an effort to prevent that drifting inward of the beach sands which threatened Provincetown with entire destruction. But the work was undertaken upon too small a scale, hnd the inhabitants of the town did not realize that the growth of the grass w’ould have to be fostered, so that most of it has perished and the advance of the sand drifts continues. The State of Massachusetts has, however, now taken the matter in hand, through its harbor and land commission, and Mr. Leonard W. Ross, of Boston, has been retained as advisory forester. Mr. Ross proposes to adopt expedients similar to those so successfully began more than a hundred years ago, to save lands on the shore of the Bay of Biscay, and expense will not be spared, for the harbor of Provincetown is the only one that affords shelter to mariners along many leagues of stormy coast. His method will be based upon that by which Nature itself once defended the point of the promontory. Her thick plantations of beach grass were backed by low forests of pitch pine, which were cut off for fuel by the early settlers. These will be renewed and, according to the Boston Transcript, a nursery has been already established for the propagation of the Scotch broom, Genista scoparia, which, with silver poplars, white willows and locusts and an undergrowth of smaller plants will be used to form windbreaks. Austrian and Scotch pines will be tried and also the marine pine, the alder, the European white birch, the hornbeam, the cockspur thorn and the tamarix.