226 CHANNEL ISLANDS OF CALIFORNIA 



lime or silica. The impulse to jump and slide down 

 the incline was irresistible. Dismounting, leaving my 

 doubtless amazed horse the only spectator of my mad- 

 ness, I ran to the brim, leaped as far as I could, struck 

 the side twenty feet below, and tobogganed to the bot- 

 tom; then I had a good cHmb to reach the summit. 

 Perhaps you have seen the trap of the little insect 

 known as the ant-lion {Myrmeleon), common almost 

 everywhere. It stations itself at the bottom of a cone 

 half or quarter of an inch across, and throws out the 

 sand, I believe with its tail, until a cone is the result, 

 then waits for a reckless ant to topple in. This 

 strange depression in the sand-dunes was a perfect 

 cone, as of some giant ant-lion; as I stood at the top 

 I imagined myself the victim about to slide into the 

 trap. 



These sand-dunes, as they are nothing but sand 

 where the witchery of the wind is shown, may be 

 passed by as mere sand, but they deserve the close 

 attention of the lover of nature. One day, lying in a 

 little cove on the northeast of San Clem_ente, I saw 

 falls of sand flowing over from the dune above, drop- 

 ping silently to the beach below. My companions, 

 Gifford Pinchot and Governor Pardee, swam in from 

 the yacht, and I saw them under the fall sHding down 

 the diminutive dune below the fall where the wind 

 had carved the pile into a beautiful shape, leaving a 

 deep depression behind. I know they saw the beauty 

 of the sand and may have experienced the irresistible 

 boyish desire to slide down the dune. 



The action of sand under the influence of the wind 

 can be observed from Cape Cod to Cape Florida, the 

 stretch of white beaches being almost unbroken all 



