s reached miles inland, and threatened to bury the
farmer's acres past recovery. Austrian fir and dwarf pine now grow
upon the white range, helping alike to keep down the sand and to bar
out the blast.

With this exception, the great change has been, is being, wrought by
the people themselves. It was for their good, in the apathy that
followed 1864, that it should be so, and Dalgas saw it. The State
aids the man who plants ten acres or more, and assumes the
obligation to preserve the forest intact; the Heath Society sells
him plants at half-price, and helps him with its advice. It disposes
annually of over thirteen million young trees. The people do the
rest, and back the Society with their support. The Danish peasant
has learned the value of cooeperation since he turned dairy farmer,
and associations for irrigation, for tree planting, and garden
planting are everywhere. They even reach across the ocean. This year
a call was issued to sons of the old soil, who have found a new home
in America, to join in planting a Danish-American forest in the
desert where hill and heather hide a silvery lake in their deep
shadows and returning wanderers may rest and dream of the long ago.

Soldier though he was, Enrico Dalgas's pick and spade brigade won
greater victories for Denmark than her armies in two wars. He
literally "won for his country within what she had lost without." A
natural organizer, a hard worker who found his greatest joy in his
daily tasks, a fearless and lucid writer who yet knew how to keep
his cause out of the rancorous politics that often enough seemed to
mistake partisanship for patriotism, he was the most modest of men.
Praise he always passed up to others. At the "silver wedding" of the
Society he founded they toasted him jubilantly, but he sat quiet a
long time. When at last he arose, it was to make this characteristic
little speech:

"I thank you very much. His Excellency the Minister of the Interior,
who is present here, will see from this how much you think of me,
and possibly my recommendation that the State make a larger
contribution to the Heath Society's treasury may thereby acquire
greater weight with him. I drink to an increased appropriation."

On the heath Dalgas was prophet, prince, and friend of the people.
In the crowds that flocked about his bier homespun elbowed gold lace
in the grief of a common loss. Boughs of the fragrant spruce decked
his coffin, the gift of the heath to the memory