I take home a piece of driftwood, for no ordinary fire, but to kindle the imagination, for it is saturated with memories and carries with it the enchantment of the sea. To light this is to set in motion a sort of magic-play. True _driftwood_ has been seasoned by the waters and mellowed by the years. Not any piece of a lobster-pot, or pleasure yacht, or, for that matter, of any modern craft at all is driftwood. It must have come from the timber of a vessel built in the olden time when copper bolts were used, so that the wood is impregnated with copper salts. That is merely the chemistry of it. The wood is saturated with sunshine and moonlight as well, with the storms and calms of the sea--its passions, its subtle moods; more than this, it absorbed of the human life whose destiny was involved with the vessel--the tragedy, the woe. It had two lives--a forest life and a sea life. By force of tragedy alone it became driftwood. Winter and summer the sea sang its brave songs over the boat and chanted her requiem at last as she lay on the ledge. This fragment drifted ashore out of the wreck of a vessel, out of the wreck of great hopes, out of the passion of the sea. Driftwood, then, is to be lighted in a spirit of reverence. No ordinary blaze, rather is it an altar fire to Poseidon, to whom were immolated the victims; to Aphrodite born of the waves. Rather is it the funeral pyre of a sea-bird, now to rise again from its ashes. It is not to warm the hands, this magic sea-fire, which has borrowed the emerald and sapphire and azure of the waters and reflects still the phosphorescent gleam which lay in the wake of the vessel, but to kindle some feeling and to nurture vague dreams. To set match to this pyre is to invoke the spirit of the deep, to hear the crooning of some distant surf, the hissing of the fretful spray; to conjure up again the wondrous opaline sea. Somewhere on this phantom ocean rides a phantom bark with all sails set, which reflect, now a rose-pink, now the faintest imaginable golden sheen, and disappear in the dusk. Perchance there flits over the mind a haunting recollection of that lost sea of childhood--that sea of virgin impressions--to vanish also into the dusk of oblivion. INDEX Abdomen, 86, 95, 105. Acorns, 120, 142, 160, 161. Acquired tendency, 97. Adder's-tongue, 20, 61, 67. Æolus, 64. Afterglow, 194. Age, 201. Agelessness, 201. Age of fishes, 204. Air-sac, 18, 19, 77. Alaska sable, 150. Alders, 14, 20, 50, 120, 162, 164, 168. Alpine woodsia, 67, 170. Alps, 154. Altar fire, 207. Amanita, 115, 126. Amazon, 25. Aments, 14. Andromeda, 168. Anemones, 1, 13, 20, 21, 59, 61, 67, 203. Animals, 136-138, 142, 146, 187, 189, 191, 192. Antennæ, 52, 101, 103. Anthers, 78. Ant hill, 94, 108. Ants, 4, 88, 91, 94-107, 109, 111, 112, 145. Aphid, 100, 101, 112. Aphrodite, 207. Apis, 78. Apple, wild, 148. April, 142, 169. Arachne, 78. Arbutus, 20, 60, 121. Arctic, 131. Arctic Circle, 23.