The Sea-beach at Ebb-tide

The Sea-beach at Ebb-tide - A Guide to the Study of the Seaweeds and the Lower Animal Life Found Between Tide-marks

The sea-shore, with its stretches of sandy beach and rocks, seems, at first sight, nothing but a barren and uninteresting waste, merely the natural barrier of the ocean. But to the observant eye these apparently desolate reaches are not only teeming with life; they are also replete with suggestions of the past. They are the pages of a history full of fascination for one who has learned to read it. In this history even the grains of sand have a part. Though so humble now, they once formed the rocky barriers of the shore. They stood as do the rocks of to-day, defiant and seemingly everlasting, but the fury of the sea, which knows no invincible adversary, has laid them low. Every coast-line shows the destructive effects of the sea, for the bays and coves, the caves at the bases of the cliffs, the buttresses, stocks, needles, and skerries, are the work of the waves. And this work is constantly going on. The story of the sands is not only one of the conflict of the sea and rocks; it is also a story of the winds. It is the winds that have rescued them from the waves and driven them about, sifting and assorting them, arranging them in graceful forms, and often heaping them up into dunes which, until fastened by vegetation, are themselves ever moved onward by the same force, sometimes burying fertile lands, trees, and even houses in their march. The sands, moreover, are in turn themselves destructive agents, to whose power the many fragments which strew the beach and dunes bear ample witness. The knotty sticks so commonly seen on the beach are often the hearts of oak-or cedar-trees from which the tiny crystals of sand have slowly cut away their less solid outer growth. Everything, in fact, upon the sands is "beach-worn," even to the window-glass of life-saving stations, which is frequently so ground that it loses its transparency in a single storm. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 43946
Author: Arnold, Augusta Foote
Release Date: Oct 13, 2013
Format: eBook
Language: English