36 THE HAUNTS OF LIFE 



countless numbers of creatures that have come 

 too near the shore. We have seen a brownish 

 line of millions of the pinhead-like Noctiluca 

 extending far along the sand. 



Sometimes there is an unexpected windfall 

 of food ! Thus one writer tells us that a 

 hurricane lasting for days, at the time that a 

 particular moth (called the nun) was swarming, 

 blew such numbers of these out to sea, that, 

 when they were washed up by the tide, their 

 dead bodies formed a wall 6| feet broad and 

 6 feet high, which stretched for many miles along 

 the shore. The same kind of thing has been 

 noticed many times in warmer regions, when 

 the locusts were caught in a storm during their 

 migration. 



But there is one thing we must remember 

 about the abundant supply of food on the sea- 

 shore it is not very regular, and it never lasts 

 long at a time. The incoming tide may throw 

 it up one day and the outgoing tide may carry 

 it away the next carry it so far that it is 

 never brought back again. For if it gets 

 beyond the shallow-water area it sinks to the 

 bottom at the " mud-line." It is not wasted 

 even then " Nature is ever a careful house- 

 keeper " ; but it is no longer available for the 



