INTRODUCTION 



the foaming seas, scud by before the blasts, 

 while over all the roar of the waves, pounding 

 relentlessly on the beach, sounds a grand sea 

 dirge. As one pauses for breath in the lee of 

 a dune and watches the clouds rush by over 

 the tumultuous ocean of sand, one feels to the 

 full the primeval grandeur of the dunes and 

 sees them in their true colors and stormy 

 activities." 



The history of the changing sand dunes is 

 recorded by Dr. Townsend with the same ac- 

 curacy that an archaeologist uses in tracing 

 the growth and decline of a great civilization. 

 The progress of individual dunes from year 

 to year, their height, their changing contours, 

 their destructive march over orchards and 

 groves, are set down with scientific care, but 

 there is preserved as well the exhilaration that 

 one feels in mounting their clean, bare slopes 

 and looking off over the blue sea to distant 

 Agamenticus. In the hollows between the 

 dunes the reader sees the cranberry trailing 

 over the sand its berry-laden vines; eagles 

 perch on the steep summits of the dunes ; their 

 white sands record the passage of bird, beast 

 and insect ; crows and gulls pass above them, 

 or a flock of snow-buntings whirl by. The 



