DIGGING FOE DEAR LIFE. 157 



Dyke brown ? or white, blending into pink at one end, and touched 

 witli broad lines of saffron ? or the most delicate of cherry red, fading 

 away into pale, brownish straw-color ? or a dozen tints of blue, curving 

 side by side in soft flounces over the rounded space of half an inch ? Yet 

 these, and a hundred other lovely, unthought-of patterns, were worn by 

 these pygmy belles of the beach, and no one of them all could complain 

 that another had imitated her; nor did the plainly dressed seem any the 

 less happy. 



Attracted at first by their handsome jackets, as so often happens with 

 our country cousins of a larger growth, I became interested to know 

 their manner of life. As each wave came rushing in, carrying ever}'- 

 thing before it, the wedges would go up the beach with the rest of the 

 shells, coral, moss, sponges, and sea-wrack; but when the surf had broken, 

 and the great law of weight pulled the waters back, sucking the sand and 

 light stuff down into the sea again, I noticed that every little donax 

 would stand up on his sharp end as quick as scat ! and dig for dear life 

 into the wet, yielding sand just being started downward by the undertow. 



Once in a while the current would prove too much for him, but nine 

 times out of ten he would sink the most of his length in the sand, and 

 hold his place till the waters had swept on. It was very amusing to 

 watch a hundred or two of these brightly painted little fellows, all at one 

 signal, as it were, flop up on their points and wriggle themselves with the 

 utmost energy deep into the sand, which sometimes would drift away 

 from around them so fast (loosened by their penetration) that they had 

 to go down three or four times their own length before making an 

 anchorage. These mishaps reminded me of the frantic exertions I once 

 witnessed in New Mexico on the part of a lizard, which was chasing a 

 bowlder rolling downhill in a vain attempt to re-hide under its shelter. 



But I soon perceived that these active wedges — hundreds though there 

 were — represented only the unfortunates that had been washed out of 

 their burrows by the heavy surf, and that their notion of happiness was 

 to be buried and thus protected as long as possible from the turn nit of 

 the waves above. That these were the dwellers beneath the thousands 

 of mysterious " pin-holes " I have mentioned was at once suggested, and 

 quickly proved by digging them up. 



Washing the earth away, they all lay in my palm tightly closed and 

 perfectly still. But I knew there was something inside of their pretty 

 coats, so I took them on board my yacht, partly filled a basin with sand 

 and sea-water, and turned my prisoners loose. 



There had elapsed an hour, I fancy, between taking them up and 



