d their roots, and they died. The ahl
is the rusty-red crust that forms under the heather in the course of
the ages where the desert rules. Sometimes it is a loose sandstone
formation; sometimes it carries as much as twenty per cent of iron
that is absorbed from the upper layers of the sand. In any case, it
must be broken through; no tree root can do it. The ahl, the poverty
of the sand, and the wind, together make the "evil genius" of the
heath that had won until then in the century-old fight with man. But
this time he had backing, and was not minded to give up. The Heath
Society was there to counsel, to aid. And soon the hedges took hold,
and gardens grew in their shelter. There is hardly a farm in all
west Jutland to-day that has not one, even if the moor waits just
beyond the gate.

Out in the desert the Society had made a beginning with plantations
of Norway spruce. They took root, but the heather soon overwhelmed
the young plants. Not without a fight would this enemy let go its
grip upon the land. It had smothered the hardy Scotch pine in days
past, and now the spruce was in peril. Searching high and low for
something that would grow fast and grow green, Dalgas and his
associates planted dwarf pine with the spruce. Strangely, it not
only grew itself, but proved to be a real nurse for the other. The
spruce took a fresh start, and they grew vigorously together--for a
while. Then the pine outstripped its nursling, and threatened to
smother it. The spruce was the more valuable; the other was at best
little more than a shrub. The croaker raised his voice: the black
heath had turned green, but it was still heath, of no value to any
one, then or ever.

He had not reckoned with Dalgas. The captain of engineers could use
the axe as well as the spade. He cut the dwarf pine out wherever the
spruce had got its grip, and gave it light and air. And it grew big
and beautiful. The Heath Society has now over nineteen hundred
plantations that cover nearly a hundred thousand acres, and the
State and private individuals, inspired by the example it set, have
planted almost as large an area. The ghost of the heath has been
laid for all time.

Go now across the heath and see the change forty years have wrought.
You shall seek in vain the lonely shepherd with his stocking. The
stocking has grown into an organized industry. In grandfather's day
the farmer and his household "knitted for the taxes"; if all hands
made enough in the twel