78 ANIMAL LIFE AND SOCIAL GROWTH 



have been cast up by the waves. Flesh-flies 

 and beetles soon find the fishes and lay their eggs 

 thereon. Some find enough such fishes to make 

 them their regular breeding habitat. Many 

 other animals, spiders, predaceous insects and 

 even toads, snakes and white-footed mice of the 

 fore-dunes find their food among the drift. Truly 

 the drift line is the lunch counter of the fore-dunes. 



In summer the drift is cast up near the water's 

 edge along the damp sand of the fore beach; in 

 winter it may be carried further back and the 

 winter's storm drift consisting of tree trunks and 

 broken bits of ships and other timbers are carried 

 far back and left high and dry on the upper beach. 

 There they serve as shelter for many of the pre- 

 daceous animals that feed on the summer drift 

 and for food as well as for shelter for the wood- 

 eating termites frequently called "white ants." 



Between the damp lower beach and the tree- 

 drift of the storm beach there is usually a level 

 extent of sand almost unoccupied by plants, but 

 in which animals are busy. There, in favorable 

 places, the tiger beetles make their burrows; 

 many other animals of the fore beach burrow more 

 or less. Gradually the animals transform the 

 dead bodies of the animal drift into humus and 

 scatter this through, as well as over the surface 

 of the sand. On the whole this beach region is 



