ics. I find them on the sandhills bordering the ocean-beach,
the wind-swept dunes between the "beach-hammock" and the hard sand of
the wave-washed beach. They are called barren by many, these sandhills
of the Atlantic coast, but I never find them so. To me they are always
attractive, whether I am traversing the sand-slopes of Cape Cod or the
similar ones of Florida. Even the grasses possess a character of their
own--gracefully erect, tiny circles traced about them where the last
wind has caused them to brush the sand. Here too are grasses rare and
beautiful--the feathery fox-tail, the tall, loose-branched sea-oats, and
many others with names unknown, which you may see ornamenting the famous
palmetto hats.

So fascinating are these sand-dunes that one wanders among them for
hours, following in the paths worn by the feet of cattle which roam
these hills and the neighboring marsh in a half-wild state. Sometimes
the banks will shelve abruptly, hollowed out by the wind, and one can
look down into a hole ten or twenty feet deep, arched over by
thorn-bushes, grapevines and a species of bay. These sand-caverns are of
frequent occurrence. There are clumps of scrubby oak completely covered
with scarlet honeysuckle and trumpet-flower. While seeking to
investigate one of these I startled a hen-quail, which, after whirring
rapidly out of sight, returned and manifested much anxiety by plaintive
calls. This is a queer place for quail: in the neighborhood of old
fields, where they can easily run out and glean a hasty meal from weeds
and broken ground, is their chosen place for a nest.

Along the surface of the sea long lines of pelicans pursue a lumbering
flight; graceful terns (sea-swallows) skim the waves; a great blue heron
stalks across the hard sand, majestic, solitary and shy of man's
approach; and dainty little beach-birds, piping plover in snowy white
and drab, glide rapidly past the surf-line. A mile below Beach Avenue is
a high sandhill shelving abruptly toward the beach, half-buried trees
projecting from its western slope: it is now known as "Eagle Cliff," so
called by the proprietor of Dungeness from the fact of my shooting an
eagle there one day in November.

In the beach-hammock are the same wind-hollowed hills, rooted into
permanence by twisted oaks and magnolias. Upon their limbs in April the
Spanish moss and air-plants were just blossoming, the former into little
star-like, hardly-discernible flowers, the latter thro