THE FROZEN SHORE 27 



ponents of the ocean fringe. In them are scraps and 

 fronds of sea- weed and oar- weed, some ground to powder 

 like coffee, others minute but undefaced fragments of 

 the plant ; with these pounded morsels of what once 

 were planks of ships, green scales from copper sheathing, 

 tiny beads of broken glass, dust of quartz and cornelian, 

 globules of chalk and coal-dust, green threads of sea- 

 grass and fibres of matting, myriads of tiny and most 

 exquisite shells no larger than a pin's head, fragments 

 of nacre from the larger shells, and white bruised limbs 

 and skeletons of infant crabs done to death in the surge. 

 The destruction of life among these small Crustacea 

 must be enormous. Yet few land-birds come to feed 

 upon their bodies, except the carrion-crows and the 

 rock-pipets, which are almost as native to the shore as 

 the sandpipers and dunlins themselves. Beyond the 

 sea-line, winter makes no disturbance in vegetable or 

 animal life. The long sea-grass floats as green and 

 luxuriant as ever in the shallow pools inside the rock- 

 ledges, and the only sign that winter reigns is the flocks 

 of brent-geese, which are pulling the grass and rolling 

 it into neat packets before swallowing it, on the edge 

 furthest from the shore. This grass seems to be the 

 sole winter food of the brent, as it was of the swans at 

 Abbotsbury, until, in 1881, the lifting of the ice in 

 which it was embedded in the fresh-water of the 

 " Fleet " carried the whole crop out to sea, and left the 

 birds either to die of starvation or to take unwillingly 

 to a new diet of grain. The geese and the wild-ducks 

 from the north crowd the estuaries and harbours during 



