FOOT-NOTES FROM A PAGE OF SAND. 299 
encased in shell armour, rarely seen alive, and scarcely 
known except by its casement, when this is thrown upon the 
beach; what some call a razor-shell, others Solen ensis. 
When the foot presses in yielding sand, surcharged with 
moisture, a slender jet of water spirts up; below is a clam 
(Mya arenaria) ; it dislikes the weight upon its elastic home, 
and remonstrates. There goes a groove in the sand, as if a 
child had wantonly dragged ‘its copper-toed boot along, or 
some curious share had turned as curious a furrow; but the 
creature that made it has gone below, after what would have 
seemed to us, had we witnessed it, a tedious journey. Scat- 
tered here and there are large globular, yet essentially 
spiral, shells of the sea-snail (Neverita heros); the animal 
that lives in them made that mark, unfolding a great fleshy 
"foot," and gliding along, perhaps eating éomethtng as it 
went, with an organ that is mouth and iiini in one. Where 
it is now, under the sand, are plenty more mail-clad things, 
of all shapes and sizes and colors; snug and secure, giving 
no sign of their presence. The sand is not only a great 
dut. of foraminiferous skeletons; it is full of flesh and 
blood. 
. . But we may look for signs from above as well as under 
the earth, or from the waters beneath ; the sand tattles many 
pleasant, harmless secrets, if we only attend. Here are 
foot-notes again, this time of real steps from real feet; the 
next tide will wash them out ; but perhaps some one of them, 
— the one chance of millions— may be left to signal, centu- 
ries hence, as much as they tell now. They are wedge- 
shaped, and meaningless as the cuneiform characters upon a 
Babylonie obelisk, unless the key to the cryptogram is 
found ; for this, the lock must first be examined to the last 
detail, and it is surprising how many details there are. The 
imprints are in two parallel lines, an inch or so apart; each 
impression is two or three inches in advance of the next one 
behind ; none of them are in pairs, but each one of one line 
is opposite the middle of the interval between two of the 
