The Sanderling 



Taken in Sanla Barbara 



Photo by the Author 



OVERDUE 



distinguish so many of his kinsfolk that we hail him chief, but because in 

 structure and habit he is most exactly adapted to those special circum- 

 stances which constitute a shore. Pray consider what a very special sort 

 of place a shore is. It is the meeting place of the two biggest things on 

 earth; viz., land and sea. Taken broadly, it has all the variety of the one 

 and the mystery of the other. It is the point of contact between two 

 incommensurables, two practical infinities. It is the place of revelation, 

 too; for the sea not only displays thereon examples of her own briny 

 treasures, but she takes a tithe of all that the land has to give her and 

 flings it back in scornful tribute on the shore. In width a shore may vary 

 from a mathematical postulate, as where a glacier fronts the ocean with 

 its wall of ice, to a teeming lagoon whose inner confines are leagues re- 

 moved from the roar of the surf. In length it is all but measureless, 

 stretching its single-stranded mazes a dozen times around the globe. In 

 fortune, too, it varies from the placid sands of Coronado to the fearful 

 crags of Magellan, or the cliffs of Norway, mocking with their granite 

 Neptune's mightiest rebuff. Of such stress and variety and opportunity 

 were the Shore-birds born, — the Shore-birds, who alone of living creatures 

 have laid eyes on every coast. 



But of Shore-birds, hundreds-rich in species, there is an inner circle 

 of privilege, just as there is an inner belt of what we call the shore. The 

 changes of the tide, with their recurrent wettings of the sand, mark out 

 this inner belt of privilege. To a place at this magic table all Shore-birds 

 may, indeed, aspire on occasion, — Turnstones, Godwits, Plovers, all these 



1255 



