282 Found Dead on the Beach. [ ZOE 
of the examples from Ben Lomond are densely scabrous, some nearly 
smooth, those from Epperson’s in Colusa County quite so. 
The form described under the name &. rhombipetala has been 
found in grain fields near Stites, in Colusa County, where, though 
still low it grew upright. 
FOUND DEAD ON THE BEACH. 
BY WALTER E. BRYANT. 
How many persons of the multitude annually visiting the Pacific 
Ocean beach near the Cliff House, and other places on the coast, 
have ever seen a dead sea-bird ? Yet, between the months from 
November to April countless hundreds are washed ashore dead by 
every storm. The body of a large mammal makes its presence 
known and avoided within a few days after landing, but the birds, 
unless sought for, are easily overlooked amongst the sand and drift 
débris defining high water mark. 
The recent rain storm which raged for a day or two in the early 
part of this month (December) was one of unusual severity as re- 
gards the violence of the wind; others have been more noted for 
the continuance of heavy rain-fall, both having an effect upon the 
destruction of bird life. Of the two I am inclined to believe, from | 
limited observation and data, that a heavy and continuous rainfall 
for several days, accompanied with a fresh breeze ( blowing twenty- 
seven miles an hour), or stronger, is more fatal to marine bird life 
than a more moderate rain-fall, and wind varying from a fresh 
breeze to a strong gale (sixty miles an hour) or greater at intervals. 
The late storm was of the latter class, and said by sea-faring men 
to have been the hardest storm ever known, It was a terrible 
south-easter, varying to the south and southwest, the wind rose in 
the dark night to a whole gale (seventy miles an. hour) and occa- 
sional gusts were said to have bordered on the verge of a hurricane 
(over eighty miles an hour). Such a condition of weather was 
more than the strongest flyers could battle against. Bewildered by 
darkness and driving rain, exhausted and unable to find food, they 
_ were beaten down into the heavy sea, and those nearest land car- 
ried by the waves inshore, where, half buried in sand and drift, I 
found them the day after the storm abated. Patrolling the beach 
