JUNE. Ill 



are also sure to be met with, and Tomahawk Lagoon is 

 an ideal hunting ground for the man with a microscope. 



As has often been remarked before, Dunedin is excep- 

 tionally well situated for the study of Natural History 

 in the wider sense of that term and this lagoon, lying as 

 it does on the borderland between fresh and salt water, 

 is an extremely rich repository of living organisms. A 

 bottle full of its weeds and water will furnish material for 

 study for many a day. 



111. 



Winter, to many who take pleasure in the field and the 

 garden, is an uninteresting time, because then the opera- 

 tions of Nature are not so conspicuous as in the warmer 

 seasons of the year, and life everywhere seems to them to 

 be dormant. Such observation is, of course, only super- 

 ficial, for we easily notice the partially hidden forces which 

 are at work preparing for next season's bud and blossoms 

 for spring's activities, its love-makings, and its reproduc- 

 tive energies. 



But he is a philosopher who thus sees beneath the 

 surface of things seen, and who, from the germ hidden to 

 common eyes can project into the glass of the future the 

 images of things not seen but yet to be developed. As we 

 are not philosophers, and require to see before we can 

 become much interested, we may at this time of year again 

 turn our attention to a domain of Nature which is as 

 interesting in winter as in summer the domain of old 

 ocean. I am not sure that a walk by the ocean beach is 

 not more full of incident at this season of the year than 

 when the sun is in the zenith, for our summer is usually so 

 windy that twelve hours of calm at a stretch are almost 

 unknown. Most people walk too late in the day, probably 

 because they are not free at an early hour. But the 

 pleasantest time to walk on the beach is in the morning or 

 early forenoon, especially when the weather is still and 

 clear and the tide dead low. At such a time there are at 

 least two zones of life represented on the beach the 

 resident life of the littoral or costal zone, that which lives 



