Did any one ever visit the shore and come home without a pocket bulging with shells? Or a big handful tied up in a grimy handkerchief? Probably that is the way most of the great collections in the country were begun. You can begin one this summer or any time that you visit a beach, and add to it daily if you are spending the summer on the shore. As your collection and your interest grow, you can exchange specimens common on your coast with collectors who live on the other oceans and the Gulf. Remember that every shell is rare until you get it in your cabinet and what is common as the sand on your coast may be a rarity in other parts of the world. You will probably begin your collection by picking up empty shells of various sizes, colours and shapes. Sometimes you will find a pair still held together by the tough tendon that worked the hinge when the bivalve that built the shell was alive and going about his affairs. Many of these will be worn by their daily encounter with the tide, and some will be pierced with small round holes too neatly ground to have been made by accident. These holes give you a hint as to why this shell is empty for they are the work of a band of little pirates which live by boring into their neighbours and sucking their life-blood. Many of the dead shells are those of animals which live far out at sea or in the deep water and have been washed ashore when the tide was high. Search along the shore where the water has drifted a line of sea-wrack. It looks like rubbish at first glance but it is almost sure to hold many small shells you will want, some even from far-off coasts. The collector will not long be satisfied to gather only such shells as he finds on the beach. His eyes are opened. What seemed to him at first a flat, smooth surface of sand strewn with bits of rubbish and a few shells, most of them not worth picking up, has awakened into life. Every pool has become as a village, its inhabitants engaged in a variety of occupations. The smooth sand is inhabited. The centre of population is down at the low-water line. The rocks, the bridge piers, the wharf piles, and the sea-walls are seen to be covered with living things. Now collecting begins in good earnest.