36 THE HAUNTS OF LIFE 
on the beach countless numbers of creatures 
that have come too near the shore. We have 
seen a brownish line of millions of the pinhead- 
like Noctiluca extending far along the sand. 
Sometimes there is an unexpected windfall 
of food! Thus one writer tells us that a hur- 
ricane lasting for days, at the time that a par- 
ticular moth (called the nun) was swarming, 
blew such numbers of these out to sea, that, 
when they were washed up by the tide, their 
dead bodies formed a wall 61% feet broad and 
6 feet high, which stretched for many miles 
along the shore. The same kind of thing has 
been noticed many times in warmer regions, 
when the locusts were caught in a storm dur- 
ing their migration. 
But there is one thing we must remember 
about the abundant supply of food on the sea- 
shore—it is not very regular, and it never lasts 
long ata time. The incoming tide may throw 
it up one day and the outgoing tide may carry 
it away the next—carry it so far that it is 
never brought back again. For if it gets be- 
yond the shallow-water area it sinks to the 
bottom at the “mud-line.” It is not wasted 
even then—“ Nature is ever a careful house- 
keeper”; but it is no longer available for the 
