-G Salt Marshes and their Inhabitants. 



SALT MARSHES AND THEIR INHABITANTS. 



BY GEORGE S. BRADY, M.R.C.S., 



Secretary to the Tyneside Naturalists' Field Club. 



There are in our comfortable laud few scenes more dreary and 

 depressiug than an extensive salt marsh, especially if seen 

 under unfavourable conditions of weather. The monotony of 

 a vast expanse of moorland is broken by undulations of its 

 surface, by the purple flush of heather, or the golden glow of 

 blossoming gorse ; and even if there be none of these it be- 

 comes grand rather than dreary in its very immensity, and the 

 ever-varying play of light and shade upon its many-tinted 

 vegetation, gives it an indescribable charm. But let us change 

 the scene. Picture to yourself a bare expanse of cold, oozy 

 soil, clothed with scanty, stunted vegetation of a dull grey- 

 green hue, with patches of treacherous mud, into which one 

 may very easily sink up to the knees before one has time to 

 invoke the shade of " Jack Robinson " (whoever that 

 mysterious worthy may have beeD) ; here and there a sullen, 

 shallow, brackish pool, with bottom of black peat or mud ; bits 

 of old worm-eaten wreck strewed about, and sinking month 

 by month deeper into the unstable soil ; cast off shells of 

 shore-crabs bleaching in the sun, and crunching beneath the 

 infrequent footstep ; no sight or sound of life except a few sea- 

 gulls or lapwings circling overhead, and only adding to the 

 " eeriuess" of the scene by their melancholy cry. All this is 

 sufficiently doleful, and with a dull leaden sky, and the breath 

 of a chill sea wind, one has need of a considerable share 

 of the spirit of Mark Tapley to keep "jolly" under the 

 circumstances. 



However, to the naturalist there is abundant interest in 

 localities such as these. Though the vegetation is so poor and 

 stunted, we iind on closer inspection not a few interesting and 

 peculiar plants, and we are at once struck with the fact that 

 many of them are remarkable for their excessively fleshy and 

 culent leaves. Perhaps the commonest of all is Glattx 

 maritima, a modest little plant with pretty but inconspicuous 

 pink flowers, or rather, we should scarcely say flow&rs, for 

 petals arc wanting, and the apparent flower is merely the flesh- 

 coloured calyx. Then there is SaUcornia kerbacea, with its 

 thick, tumid leaves, which often obtain for it, though incor- 

 rectly, the name of Samphire ; the true Samphire (firvthm/u/m 

 maritvnvwm) being essentially a rock-loving plant and growing 

 often in the most inaccessible positions, as Shakspeare well 

 knew : 



