The Audubon Societies 285 



"burrowing'' and "swimming' animals living on the lowest tide-levels of the 

 outer beach. Along the lower beach proper, plant and animal life must struggle 

 hard with the constantly changing tides, and here, as one might judge, there 

 are fewer forms existing. Many tiny insects (Collembola) of peculiar habits 

 are found at this level while a little higher up the familiar horseshoe crab 

 comes to nest. 



There is much complication in the daily life of some of the animals living 

 on the lower beach, for those which are air-breathers must move elsewhere 

 when the tide is high. Many an hour may be profitably spent watching their 

 movements. 



Above the lower beach follows an upper beach strewn with debris from the 

 incoming tides along its lower margin, and joining the "desert zone" of fine 

 sand and stiff, sparse beach-grass along its upper edge. The upper beach might 

 well be termed an old curiosity shop of Nature, for here are found the flotsam 

 and jetsam of the sea. By one scientist it has been described as the "graveyard 

 of the shallow sea," and by shallow seaweshould remember, is meant the lowest 

 low- tide area. Walking along any beach we have all wondered no doubt how 

 the things which we picked up got there, smooth bits of wood or pebbles soft 

 to the touch with constant wearing by the waves, old bottles, bits of boxes or 

 lumber, sometimes parts of ships, seeds, pieces of sea-weed, flabby jelly-fishes, 

 embryo-cases of skates, and certain dead insects which have been drowned, 

 probably by being blown out of their course and cast into the sea. Most of 

 these insects, we are told, that have been found on the sand spit are leaf-eat- 

 ing by habit, like the destructive Colorado potato-beetle and the beneficial 

 ladybugs. Since much of this debris, both plant and animal matter, is edible, 

 animals of scavenger habit are attracted thither, which accounts for the pres- 

 ence of herbivorous beach-fleas, rove-beetles, and a tiny white earthworm, 

 as well as carnivorous ants, flesh flies and carrion beetles of various kinds, one 

 of which is called Necrophorus from its habit of burying dead prey in which 

 it lays its eggs. There also occur dermestids in larval form, those tiny "skin- 

 eating" beetles, some kinds of which are so destructive in museums and 

 elsewhere in carpets and sometimes even upon bacon. 



Added to this strange assortment of creatures and things along the upper 

 beach, are still other forms of life, predaceous by habit, that is, preying upon 

 living animals. Such are the sand-white running spiders and robber flies, the 

 tiger beetles, ant-lions and familiar Barn Swallows, which find a rich feeding- 

 area along this narrow line of the spit. 



Nearly up to the storm-bluff Hne of the upper beach, where beach-grass 

 joins sand, may be found here and there a wandering grasshopper, almost 

 white in this environment but capable of becoming much darker if removed 

 from its sandy habitat, a few crickets, and sometimes an occasional song-bird 

 in bits of jetsam lumber. Here on the outer beach, too, come the omnivorous 

 Crows in some numbers, to glean morsels of sea-food for themselves and young. 



