Sea Sands 171 



shoe or cubes of Friesland peat. All such wander- 

 ing relics, as well as the more tragic fragments cast 

 up from wrecks, are full of the colour of contrasts as 

 they lie beneath the winding convolvulus on English 

 sand. Many of the plants and flowers that nod over 

 them are themselves of forms and colours that seem 

 half exotic among normal English vegetation. The 

 sea-poppy clings with its hoary foliage and bright 

 yellow blossoms to the flank of the sand, and in 

 later summer stretches the long horn-like seed-pods 

 over its tarnished stems. Spiny sea-hollies are 

 dotted about the slopes, with their dense bluish 

 growth and heads of light purple blossom. When 

 they die down in winter, the shifting sand will tear 

 them from their hold, and the withered plant goes 

 rolling in the wind along the waste. Besides the 

 small pink or white convolvulus, common in inland 

 cornfields, the larger pink sea convolvulus is looped 

 about the sandhills among the wiry grasses. The 

 common white convolvulus that climbs about most 

 inland copses and hedgerows has a way of producing 

 pink blossoms when it grows by the sea ; but its 

 blossoms are larger than those of the sea convol- 

 vulus, and it will not root itself in the bare dune 

 like the true plants of the sand. For years this 

 lean and hoary vegetation may wind a web of rooty 

 fibres more and more thickly over the face of the 

 sandhill, until it seems likely to become firm ground 

 at last, and to make green pasture for sheep. But 

 then the unknown movements of the sea bottom 

 may throw up fresh masses of crushed shells and 

 sand, till the new banks mount the dunes, and stream 



