BY THE SEA. II5 



never in other places ; the floral vedettes that 

 come down on the rocks and sand and delight in 

 occasional sprinklings of salty spray, and to snuff 

 the saline breath from old ocean's swelling breast. 

 Sea blight, sea lovage, beach pear, sea plantain, 

 sea milkworts, sea rockets, one species of the 

 golden-rod, solidago sempcrvircns, all members 

 of different families, have for some reason taken 

 into their yellow and purple heads, to plant them- 

 selves on this border-land, and from watch-tower 

 and signal-post make their bows, and wave their 

 thick, fleshy leaves in response to the swaying 

 fronds of algse below them. 



Within a few feet of the highest wave-mark on 

 the shingle at Long Beach, I came full upon 

 another of these sea warders softly ringing its 

 chimes of tiny bells in Neptune's ear. Its name 

 is mertensia maritima, or sea lung wort, a distant 

 and infrequent relation to the forget-me-not. The 

 flowers, which are hung on slender pedicels in 

 clusters, have creases around the tubes just above 

 the calyx teeth, as if the finest threads, tightly 

 drawn, had girded them. They are of the pecul- 

 iarly beautiful hue of their famous second-cousins, 

 and clearly show their borage blood in the deep 

 four-lobed ovaries at the base of the single styles. 

 It was remarkable what pains the plant had taken 

 to grow here. How far the succulent roots had 

 wormed themselves down among the coarse gravel, 



