'i9i5 ] Bailey, Plum Island Night Herons. 433 



trade lens known as a "rapid rectilinear," a three speed shutter, 

 and a few single plate holders together with other necessary acces- 

 sories, such as tripod, thread auxiliary lenses, etc. Of the half 

 dozen or more exposures made on this trip there were but one or 

 two that proved successful, my failure due to a certain extent, to 

 my inexperience in using a camera and also I might add, that in 

 the light of the knowledge gained in recent years, of a camera 

 and its management, due to inadequate equipment for the work in 

 hand, a better lens and more rapid shutter being necessary for the 

 making of good photos in this particular line of work. 



The weather on this occasion was typical of the best in June, 

 the morning a clear and bright one, with a light northwest wind 

 blowing and a few low lying white-capped clouds in the west, 

 prophetic of possible showers later in the day. In making the two 

 mile tramp down the shore from the trolley line I found the beach 

 much changed by the storms of the previous winter. Much of 

 the sand along the upper end of the Island was cut away and the 

 beach narrowed, the portions thus removed being deposited in 

 shoals and bars farther down along the shore, in the region of " High 

 Sandy Beach" and from this point along toward the southern ex- 

 tremity of the Island. 



Barren though these low lying sandhills may be at some seasons 

 and seem to some people, yet they possess a charm and beauty 

 peculiarly their own, and never seemed to me more picturesque 

 and delightful than on this morning. The rolling wind swept dunes 

 with their green caps of waving beach grass and low plum; the 

 violet, porphyry particled sand blown into delicate curving lines 

 along their slopes, blending harmoniously with the paler bronze of 

 the sand mass; with now and then glimpses to be caught between 

 the dunes of the fresh and vivid greens of the level marshes, and 

 distant purple inland hills; and on the water side, the deep blues 

 and changing greens of the sparkling, restless sea with the duller 

 purple of the distant Cape Ann; the crystalline, actinic blue of 

 the sky; all these burnished and blended, mellowed and permeated 

 by the bright sunlight of a perfect June day. 



" Breathes there a man with soul so dead . . . . " whose aesthetic 

 senses would not respond, and quicken with appreciation at this 

 enchantment wrought by Nature's alchemists? 



