d many others are sights which a half-hour's tramp, without even
wetting our shoes, may show us. Before we leave, hints of more deeply
hidden secrets of the marsh may perhaps come to us. A swamp sparrow may
show by its actions that its nest is not far away; from the depths of a
ditch jungle the clatter of some rail comes faintly to our ears, and the
distant croak of a night heron reaches us from its feeding-grounds,
guarded by the deeper waters.

And what if behind me to westward the wall of the woods stands high?
The world lies east: how ample, the marsh and the sea and the sky!
A league and a league of marsh-grass, waist-high, broad in the blade.

Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and terminal sea?
Somehow my soul seems suddenly free
From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin.
Sidney Lanier.

SECRETS OF THE OCEAN

We are often held spellbound by the majesty of mountains, and indeed a
lofty peak forever capped with snow, or pouring forth smoke and ashes, is
impressive beyond all terrestrial things. But the ocean yields to nothing
in its grandeur, in its age, in its ceaseless movement, and the question
remains forever unanswered, "Who shall sound the mysteries of the sea?"
Before the most ancient of mountains rose from the heart of the earth, the
waves of the sea rolled as now, and though the edges of the continents
shrink and expand, bend into bays or stretch out into capes, always
through all the ages the sea follows and laps with ripples or booms with
breakers unceasingly upon the shore.

Whether considered from the standpoint of the scientist, the mere
curiosity of the tourist, or the keen delight of the enthusiastic lover of
Nature, the shore of the sea--its sands and waters, its ever-changing
skies and moods--is one of the most interesting spots in the world. The
very bottom of the deep bays near shore--dark and eternally silent,
prisoned under the restless waste of waters--is thickly carpeted with
strange and many-coloured forms of animal and vegetable life. But the
beaches and tide-pools over which the moon-urged tides hold sway in their
ceaseless rise and fall, teem with marvels of Nature's handiwork, and
every day are restocked and replanted with new living objects, both arctic
and tropical offerings of each heaving tidal pulse.

Here on the northeastern shores of our continent one may spend days of
leisure or delightful stu