i 9 z AUGUST 



hearing and smelling, feeling and, perhaps, tasting ; but 

 perhaps no place is quite so rich in little memories that 

 may be repeated for certain-sure as the seaside, and it is 

 generally the very small thing that is the most memor 

 able, such as this sudden denial of its gravity by the sand 

 and the shell. 



The cause, I suppose, is much the same as produces the 

 swing of the seaweeds that had been pointing seawards 

 and now point landwards. The tide has turned, and the 

 presence of a new force is felt at the base of the pool. 

 Bathers and promenade loungers enjoy a high tide and 

 the deep water that is given when the sea has to climb 

 the rocks or shingle on a shelving shore ; but the very 

 lowest point of a spring-tide has charms altogether un 

 rivalled if you are on the look-out for what early Vic 

 torian books called &quot; common objects.&quot; It is a pleasure 

 in itself to walk far out where the sea flowed even at low 

 tide, in those paltry days when half a moon indicated 

 half a tide. Those learned people, the marine biologists, 

 get a large proportion of their knowledge about fish and 

 crabs, about starfish and sea urchins (which, surprisingly, 

 are a sort of star fish), about shells and seaweeds, from 

 the dredge dragged from a seafaring boat ; and we may 

 trespass a little on their special preserve when the moon 

 has dragged the sea out to this inordinate distance and 

 bared the floor. Is anything so dead as the dry sand on a 

 beach withdrawn from the tide ? Is anything more 

 patently alive than the edge of the sand at the sea s edge 

 as the low spring-tide turns ? It bubbles with life. Spiral 

 spits of sand rise up as if the sand itself were yeasty. You 

 may actually catch sight, without the labour of digging, of 

 that beautiful silvery fish which we call a sand-eel. 

 The live animals whose bits of shells lie em 

 bedded higher up on the edge Venuses conspicuous 



