38 South Beach. 



the vicinity, and in Winter, after the ground is covered with 

 snow, their tracks are innumerable. But one rabbit is very 

 industrious in track-making, and it is surprising how many 

 places he has a mind to visit, thus leading you to believe 

 that a great number have been about the hen-coops. 



The dunes on the Point run parallel and near to the 

 shore on the south side, and it is pleasing to walk through 

 the little vales that separate them. Often the evening prim- 

 roses are conspicuous there, and the lowly camphor weed, 

 the prickly pear and the gray and sombre hudsonia find 

 favored situations. But I should not call the hudsonia 

 gray and sombre, for though it appears during eleven months 

 of the year that the earth has brought forth a grizzly and 

 shaggy coat that seems about to wither and die away, yet 

 in June and the latter part of May it decks itself in yellow 

 blossoms, and shows that latent vitality that is ever so 

 surprising in nature. Syneda graphica, a pretty moth, with 

 marbled wings of yellow, of gray and of brown, frequents 

 these patches of hudsonia twice a year, for its caterpillars 

 probably feed upon it, and Utetheisa bella, that orange and 

 white moth, with showy pink hind wings, also flies in num- 

 bers in the vicinity. 



The beach-plums are a great attraction to a shore ram- 

 bler, and the bay-berries to the white-breasted swallows 

 that congregate on the Point in great flocks. It is believed 

 to be a weather sign, this vast gathering of birds, for it is 

 said that when the swallows visit the bay-berry bushes a 

 storm is near. The branches of the bay often bend under 

 their united weight, and the dark glossy blue of their backs 

 make the group resplendent in color. On other portions 



