156 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS 



leave the rocks bare. At the bottom of the ebb 

 I like to climb perilously down the rough Glades 

 cliffs to life-brooding pools and inlets, where lazy 

 waves swirl or are for a brief hour cut off. At 

 the half-tide line the rock that is a reddish gran- 

 ite becomes chalky white with the shells of barn- 

 acles 'that cover every inch of space from there 

 down. Acorn-like, they cluster closer than ever 

 acorns did on the most prolific oak. After the 

 tides reach them as they rise, the whole surface 

 of the rock must be fuzzy with their curved cirri 

 of tongues which protrude and lap the rising 

 waves. Their number is legion, yet how infinite 

 must be the fine floating life, so fine that we can- 

 not note that it clouds the limpid water, on which 

 these sessile gray creatures feed. 



Below a certain level these are crowded out by 

 the mussels which grow in such dense accumula- 

 tions that they cling not only to the rock but to 

 one another and to stubby brown seaweed till 

 they are like nothing so much as pods of bees 

 swarming about their queen. So dense is this 

 grouping of living creatures that the inner ones 

 are smothered by their crowding fellows and 

 serve merely as a foundation on which these 

 build. Even among these swarm starfishes and 



