With his lawyer friend Captain Dalgas tramped the heath far and wide for ten years.  Then their talks had matured a plan.  Dalgas wrote to the Copenhagen newspapers that the heath could be reclaimed, and suggested that it should be done by the State.  They laughed at him.  “Nothing better could have happened,” he said in after years, “for it made us turn to the people themselves, and that was the road to success, though we did not know it.”  In the spring of 1866 a hundred men, little and big landowners most of them, met at his call, and organized the Heath Society[1] with the object of reclaiming the moor.  Dalgas became its managing director.

[Footnote 1:  Danske Hedeselskab.]

To restore to the treeless waste its forest growth was the fundamental idea, for until that was done nothing but the heather could grow there.  The west wind would not let it.  But the heath farmer shook his head.  It would cost too much, and give too little back.  What he needed was water and marl.  Could the captain help them to these?—­that was another matter.  The little streams that found their way into the heath and lost it there, dire need had taught them to turn to use in their fields; not a drop escaped.  But the river that ran between deep banks was beyond their reach.  Could he show them how to harness that?  Dalgas saw their point.  “We are working, not for the dead soil, but for the living men who find homes upon it,” he told his associates, and tree planting was put aside for the time.  They turned canal diggers instead.  Irrigation became their aim and task; the engineer was in his right place.  The water was raised from the stream and led out upon the moor, and presently grass grew in the sand which the wiry stems of the heather had clutched so long.  Green meadows lined the water-runs, and fragrant haystacks rose.  To the lean sheep was added a cow, then two.  The farmer laid by a little, and took in more land for cultivation.  That meant breaking the heath.  Also, it meant marl.  The heath is lime-poor; marl is lime in the exact form in which it best fits that sandy soil.  It was known to exist in some favored spots, but the poor heath farmer could not bring it from a distance.  So the marl borer went with the canal digger.  Into every acre he drove his auger, and mapped out his discoveries.  At last accounts he had found marl in more than seventeen hundred places, and he is not done yet.  Where there was none, Dalgas’s Society built portable railways into the moor far enough to bring it to nearly every farmer’s door.

It was as if a magic wand had been waved over the heath.  With water and marl, the means were at hand for fighting it and winning out.  Heads that had drooped in discouragement were raised.  The cattle keep increased, and with it came the farmer’s wealth.  Marl changes the character of the heath soil; with manure to fertilize it there was no reason why it should not grow crops—­none, except the withering blast of the west wind.  The time for Dalgas to preach tree planting had come.