In vain through every changeful year Did nature lead him as before; A primrose by a river's brim, A yellow primrose was to him, And it was nothing more. At noon, when by the forest's edge He lay beneath the branches high, The soft blue sky did never melt Into his heart; he never felt The witchery of the soft blue sky. WORDSWORTH. To him who in the love of Nature holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language. BRYANT. INTRODUCTION I SIGNS ON THE BEACH 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. Even a blind man could not stand long upon a shingly beach without knowing that the sea was busily at work. Every wave that rolls in from the open ocean hurls the pebbles up the slope of the beach, and then as soon as the wave has broken and the water has dispersed, these pebbles come rattling down with the currents that sweep back to the sea. The clatter of the beach thus tells us plainly that as the stones are being dragged up and down they are constantly knocked against each other; and it is evident that by such rough usage all [pg002] angular fragments of rock will soon have their corners rounded off and become rubbed into the form of pebbles. As these pebbles are rolled to and fro upon the beach they get worn smaller and smaller, until at length they are reduced to the state of sand. Although this sand is at first coarse, it gradually becomes finer and finer as surely as though it were ground in a mill; and ultimately it is carried out to sea as fine sediment and laid down upon the ocean floor.[1] [Footnote 1: Huxley.]