CHAPTER XII. 

 BARNACLES AND ACORN-SHELLS. 



OCCASIONALLY in strolling along a beach after a storm we 

 shall encounter some wreckage that came ashore with the 

 last wave of the incoming tide, and so failed to be washed off 

 again. It may be a spar, a rudder, a stern-board with a 

 name upon it that tells a tale of a vessel that has gone down. 

 It may come in clean, with the splintered wood looking as 

 though just smashed, and we may judge from such appear- 

 ances how long it is since the catastrophe happened. On the 

 other hand, it may bear evidence of having floated in the sea 

 for a long period before getting into a current running coast- 

 wards. Such evidence will consist in the wood being heavily 

 soaked with water, or in its surface being covered with hun- 

 dreds of writhing snake-like creatures with pale-blue heads. 

 We have met under such circumstances, with balks of timber 

 with scarcely an inch of their surface not covered with this 

 foreign growth ; with casks on which they grew all round the 

 edges of the heads and the hoops. 



A few months ago there drifted into our " porth " a small 

 keg-buoy with a long thick hawser attached, and the sub- 

 merged half of the buoy had a fine crop of the writhing things 

 hanging from it, whilst they hung from the rope in clusters a 

 few inches apart. The finder very kindly hauled it upon 

 the rocks, and coiled the hawser round it that I might photo- 

 graph the entire lot. As it lay there in the autumn sunshine 

 it looked a very pretty group, and I regret that the camera 

 would not reproduce the snaky movements, nor the fine 

 colouring. 



