SEA-SIDE PLANTS. 29 



Norfolk, where its service is very great, it is called 

 Marram, a name much resembling Muran, which 

 is its name in the Gaelic language. The Dutch owe 

 to these grasses the greater part of their country, 

 which but for the sand-banks, held down by their 

 roots, would have long since been swept into the 

 sea. The fact is, that the sea retires from some 

 shores and encroaches upon others ; and such is the 

 situation of the town of Hull, in Yorkshire, that it 

 is generally believed it would long ago have been 

 covered by the waves were it not for the sand- 

 banks at Spurn Point, on which their full force is 

 borne, before they reach the town. These sea-side 

 grasses bind together this useful natural fortifica- 

 tion ; and thus Hull, like some places on the Welsh 

 coast, and like the shores of France which lie 

 between Boulogne and Dunkirk, especially in the 

 tract near Calais, is saved by its sand-banks, thus 

 preserved from dispersion by the strong matwork 

 of roots running under the surface of their soil. In 

 the sandy soils of Upper and Lower Egypt, the 

 driving sands have buried cities, the ruins of which 

 still appear among the wide-spread heaps. " No- 

 thing can be more melancholy," says M. Denon, 

 " than to walk over villages swallowed up by the 

 sands of the desert; to trample under foot their 

 roofs ; to strike against the summits of their mina- 

 rets : to reflect that yonder were cultivated fields ; 

 that there grew trees; that here were even the 

 dwellings of men, and that all have vanished." 



But it is not only in countries remarkable for 

 large tracts of sandy soil that whole regions have, 

 by the action of the winds, been converted into 

 deserts. Beautiful and fertile districts in our own 

 country, lands of cornfields and meadows, and trees 



