at the flowers of the field would at once
die if you planted them in salt and sand. They would starve to death.

Even the strongest seaside plants shun that part of the beach washed by
the waves. They leave that to the seaweeds.

Let us look first at some plants which have their home on the
sand-hills. Here is a fine one, like a thistle, with stiff prickly
leaves, and a stiff blue stem. In August it has blue-grey flowers. This
plant is called Sea Holly, its leaves being like those of the holly. It
has an unpleasant smell, yet its roots are used for making some kinds of
sweets.

Now try to pull up a plant of Sea Holly. You find it no easy task. Then
dig away the sand, and you see that its large roots have gone deep and
far. All these plants of sandy places grow like that. Sand has no food
or drink to give to plants. So they send their roots out, like plants in
a desert, until they find what they want. Besides food and drink, they
need a firm anchor in the loose sand. The Sea Holly, with its roots deep
down and far-spreading, can hold its own, though the gale tears at it
and throws its sandy bed here and there.

We pass many small creeping plants as we walk in the dry sand. There is
a pretty Sea Convolvulus, with its stems deeply buried. It is a cousin
of the common Bindweed. Then we see many plants of Thyme, and a few
ragged bushes of Gorse. We notice that several little plants grow near
the Gorse, as if they had crept there for shelter. The sea breeze has
blown the sand into heaps, and even on these dry, thirsty hillocks we
see many tufts of grass.

[Illustration: 1. THE COMMON LOBSTER. 2. HERMIT CRAB.]

These Couch Grasses and Dune Grasses, as they are often called, are
coarse and hard. Cattle pass them by in disgust. Yet they are the most
useful plants on the shore. They can live and spread where other plants
die. They have very long underground stems, which go through and through
the dry, loose sand. The wind does its best to bury them in sand, but
they send up hard, sharp buds, and go on living, and spreading.

Bit by bit, the sand is held together by the matted stems of these
grasses. It becomes firm, instead of loose; the wind can no longer blow
it about. Then other plants can grow in that place. You know how men go
out to the wild parts of the earth and, by hard work, make those places
ready for others to settle there. Well, the sand-grass works like that.
It prepares the way for useful plants to grow in p