
"D RE 
AMERICAN NATURALIST. 
Vol. III. C SEPTEMBERB, 1869.— No. 7. 
cc G5 5t 9) O9 
SEA-SIDE HOMES: AND WHAT LIVED IN THEM. 
BY DR. ELLIOTT COUES, U. 8. A. | 

Mirz after mile of sloping sea-beach occupies the front 
of a low island on the Carolina coast, and contends, along 
à foamy line, against waves that ceaselessly advance, to be 
continually repulsed; a sea-front flanked with sand-works 
own by the wind into tumuli over the trenches, where lie 
buried countless shells that will only come to light again as 
fossils, when the books of to-day, and those who wrote them, 
have become indistinguishable dust; beyond which there is 
a vast bed of oozy mire hidden by the rank growth of reeds 
that rustle and surge with every breath of wind. Among 
the sand-mounds, defended by these buttresses alike from 
the open violence of the sea and the insidious approach of 
the marsh, are sequestered spots, bestrewn with shells, ear- 
peted with slender grasses whose nodding spears trace curi- 
ous circles in the sand about their roots, with here and there 
a half-buried vertebra of a stranded whale, or the rib of 
Some ill-fated vessel, telling a tale of disaster by sea,—spots 
So secluded that the measured cadence of the wave-beats, 
Confused by this and that avenue of approach, only enters 
With an inarticulate murmur. Here is the chosen home of 

Se ITO eas ll T LL RUN 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year by the PEABODY ACADEMY OF 
CIENCE, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court ar the District of M. 
ER. NATURALIST, VOL. III. 43 (337) 
