208 
NATURE NOTES 
bush we come upon a dome-shaped nest with a hole at one 
side, where a dormouse had made his home. As we touch 
the nest the whole family come running out, father, mother, 
and three young ones, leaving us to wonder how five dormice 
could possibly exist in such a small space. But our medita- 
tions are cut short as a shot echoes through the wood, creating 
a great disturbance amongst the woodland dwellers. Magpies 
and jays dart out from the wood, screaming and chattering : 
the pheasants hurry into the bushes or fly up to the trees : the 
rabbits scuttle into their holes ; and the squirrels run higher 
up the branches. 
Our sanctuary thus violated, we too prepare for flight ; 
and as the reports get nearer and clearer, we hurriedly leave 
the wood and its perturbed inhabitants, and regain the road 
in safety, not, however, without experiencing a feeling of regret 
at"" such an abrupt and melancholy ending to our morning’s 
ramble. 
Edith M. Howes. 
THE SEA AFTER A GALE. 
,EW people, comparatively, have ever seen the effect on 
the sea of a powerful gale continued without inter- 
mission for three or four days and nights ; and to those 
who have not I believe it must be unimaginable, not 
from the mere force or size of surge, but from the complete 
annihilation of the limit between sea and air. The water from 
its prolonged agitation is beaten, not into mere creaming foam, 
but into masses of accumulated yeast,* which hang in ropes and 
wreaths from wave to wave, and where one curls over to break, 
form a festoon like a drapery from its edge ; these are taken up 
by the wind, not in dissipating dust, but bodily, in writhing, 
hanging, coiling masses, which make the air white and thick as 
with snow, only the flakes are a foot or two long each : the 
surges themselves are full of foam in their very bodies, under- 
neath, making them white all through, as the water is under a 
great cataract ; and their masses, being thus half water and half 
air, are torn to pieces by the wind whenever they rise, and 
carried away in roaring smoke which chokes and strangles like 
actual water. Add to this, that when the air has been exhausted 
of its moisture by long rain the spray of the sea is caught by it, 
* The yesty waves of Shakespere have made the likeness familiar, and prob- 
ably most readers take the expression as merely equivalent to foamy ; but 
Shakespere knew better. Sea-foam does not, under ordinary circumstances, last 
a moment after it is formed, but disappears in a mere white film. But the foam 
of a prolonged tempest is altogether different, it is whipped foam, thick, per- 
manent, and in a foul or discoloured sea, very ugly, especially in the way it hangs 
about the tops of the waves, and gathers into clotted concretions before the 
driving wind 
