We often love to think now of the life of men on beaches,--at least in midsummer, when the weather is serene; their sunny lives on... the sand, amid the beach-grass and bayberries, their companion a cow, their wealth a jag of driftwood or a few beach plums, and their music the surf and the peep of the beech-bird.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The beach-grass is "two to four feet high, of a sea-green color," and it is said to be widely diffused over the world. In the Hebr...ides it is used for mats, pack-saddles, bags, hats, etc.: paper has been made of it at Dorchester in this State, and cattle eat it when tender. It has heads somewhat like rye, from six inches to a foot in length, and it is propagated both by roots and seeds. To express its love for sand, some botanists have called it Psamma arenaria, which is the Greek for sand, qualified by the Latin for sandy,--or sandy sand. As it is blown about by the wind, while it is held fast by its roots, it describes myriad circles in the sand as accurately as if they were made by compasses.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In Dwight's "Travels in New England" it is stated that the inhabitants of Truro were formerly regularly warned under the authority... of law in the month of April yearly, to plant beach- grass, as elsewhere they are warned to repair the highways.... In this way, for instance, they built up again that part of the Cape between Truro and Provincetown where the sea broke over in the last century.... Thus Cape Cod is anchored to the heavens, as it were, by a myriad little cables of beach-grass, and, if they should fail, would become a total wreck, and ere long go to the bottom.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Total physical and mental inertia are highly agreeable, much more so than we allow ourselves to imagine. A beach not only permits ...such inertia but enforces it, thus neatly eliminating all problems of guilt. It is now the only place in our overly active world that does.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »