ABUNDANCE OF SHORE LIFE 9 



frogs of the swamp, the watering-places of deer, the 

 footprints and bruised reeds where wild pigs had 

 wallowed or cattle had come down to drink. To the 

 coast fishers the flocking of gulls indicated the shoals 

 of fry ; and a school of dolphins or porpoises in pur- 

 suit of mackerel or bigger game pointed out to them 

 those waves of migration that set in towards the shore, 

 and after an interval as mysteriously recoil to other 

 coasts or into deep water, carrying their pursuers along 

 in the chase. 



Floating helplessly off the shore or cast up on the 

 beach even of our own coasts, there have been found 

 from time to time strange creatures that justify the 

 widespread feeling of the unplumbed possibilities of 

 the ocean : ribbon-like fish twenty feet long, huge 

 turtles with leathery skins, grotesque sun-fish, and 

 eagle-rays of gigantic size. When searching for 

 bait among rocks encrusted with animals, men found, 

 even as we find to-day, cuttlefish and conger-eels 

 sheltering in their crevices, strange worms of unusual 

 size and agility that broke into pieces which crept 

 and wriggled along as though the severance had 

 endowed them with fresh life. 



With the coming of spring the longshoreman would 

 notice a change in the beach. Over the sands, under 

 the stones, and round the weeds he would find pears, 

 grapes, purses, and strings of jelly hardly firmer than 

 the stinging medusae or the fleshy polyps and anemones 

 that meet him the year round. He knows that, like 

 the foam, the medusa? soon dry to a film, and is 



