THE SANDHOPPER 87 



and then covering themselves with sand by means 

 of their feelers. So the fishermen often call them 

 "sand-raisers." 



PLATE XXIX 

 THE SANDHOPPER (i and I A) 



Commoner even than the shrimps are the Sand- 

 hoppers. On any sandy part of the shore you 

 may find them in thousands and thousands. If 

 you walk along the beach where the sand is dry, 

 and step rather heavily, you will see their holes 

 opening all round you. If you walk along it where 

 it is damp, you will find that it is honeycombed 

 with their burrows. If you turn over a stone, 

 or lift up a piece of sea-weed which has been 

 thrown up by the waves, twenty, or thirty, or forty 

 of them will come skipping out like so many 

 tiny kangaroos. And if you walk near the edge 

 of the water when the tide is coming in you 

 may often see them leaping about in such vast 

 numbers that they look just like a thick mist 

 rising for a foot or eighteen inches into the air. 



Yet sandhoppers have so many enemies that 

 it really seems wonderful that any of them should 

 be left alive at all. Nearly all the shore birds 

 feast upon them, and so do many of the land 

 birds. Indeed, when the tide is rising, you may 

 often see a long line of birds standing closely 



