They are devoting more and more attention to the production of turpentine by planting the maritime pine which grew here in the days of Strabo, and thereby reclaiming the vast tracts of sand thrown up by the sea. A priest, the Abbé Desbiez, and his brother are said to have first conceived the idea of reclaiming their native deserts and staying the progress of the quicksands which had buried so many places, and were moving unceasingly on at the rate of about twenty-five yards a year, threatening the destruction of many more. That was about a hundred years ago. A few years after M. Brémontier, a French engineer, tested the plan by planting, as far as his means allowed, the maritime pine, the strong, fibrous roots of which take tenacious hold of the slightest crevice in the rock, and absorb the least nutriment in the soil. But this experiment was slow to lead to any important result, as the _pinada_, or pine plantations, involve an outlay that makes no return for years. It was not till Louis Philippe’s time that the work was carried on with any great activity. Napoleon III. also greatly extended the plantations--the importance of which became generally acknowledged--not only to arrest the progress of the sands, but to meet the want of turpentine in the market, so long dependent on imports. In ten years the trees begin to yield an income. Each acre then furnishes twelve or fifteen thousand poles for vineyards or the coalman. The prudent owner does not tap his trees till they are twenty-five years old. By that time they are four feet in circumference and yield turpentine to the value of fifty or sixty francs a year. Then the _résinier_ comes with his hatchet and makes an incision low down in the trunk, from which the resin flows into an earthern jar or a hollow in the ground. These jars are emptied at due intervals, and the incision from time to time is widened. Later, others are made parallel to it. These are finally extended around the tree. With prudence this treatment may be continued a century; for this species of pine is very hardy if not exhausted. When the poor tree is near its end, it is hacked without any mercy and bled to death. Then it is only fit for the sawmill, wood-pile, or coal-pit.