THE LIGHTHOUSE IN THE DUNES


TO
My Wife


PREFACE

IN 1767 Gilbert White complained that he had none to share his tastes in natural history. He says: “For want of a com­panion to quicken my industry and sharpen my attention, I have made but slender prog­ress in a kind of information to which I have been attached from my childhood.” In these modern days, nature students are numerous and I have been blessed with friends who have appreciated to the full these dunes and marshes of Ipswich.

For the last twenty years I have spent most of my summer vacations at Ipswich and have made brief visits there as often as I could at other seasons, while almost twenty years be­fore that the birds of this Massachusetts coast began to claim my attention.

The opportunities for study are large in these regions, and my excuse for not having gone deeper in all these years, is that I have been of necessity a brief bird-of-passage in the dunes and marshes, but even with visits of a day’s duration one can in time cover every date in the calendar.

The formation of sand dunes and salt marshes is much the same the world over, while the animal and vegetable life of these regions is very similar on both sides of the North Atlantic. This book, therefore, should be of general and not merely local value, and is addressed to all lovers of seashore dunes and marshes and of their wild inhabitants.

I wish to express my indebtedness to Mr. Walter Deane for botanical identifications, and to Dr. Glover M. Allen for the identifi­cations of mammals. In matters ornitholog­ical I have tried to hold my own with several good friends, among them Mr. William Brew­ster, Dr. Walter Faxon, Mr. Ralph Hoffmann, Mr. Francis H. Allen, Dr. Glover M. Allen and Mr. A. C. Bent, all of whom at times have shared with me the pleasures of these regions.

Chapter XII, slightly modified, has already been published in the Auk of July, 1912, and I am indebted to the editor for permission to republish here.

Most of the illustrations are from my own photographs, but I am indebted for several to Dr. Glover M. Allen and to Mr. J. H. Emer­ton, and for one each to Mr. J. T. Morse and to Mr. F. B. McKechnie. To Mr. R. T. Crane, Jr., I am indebted for the photographs of the old maps. I wish also to express my thanks to Dr. Robert Swift for his drawings of seals and mushrooms, and to Dr. Glover M. Allen for his great kindness in reviewing the manu­script. To my wife and eldest daughter I am especially indebted for much patient and kindly criticism.

I have omitted all scientific names of ani­mals and plants from the text, but those so inclined will find them in the index.

I have sometimes been asked what I found of interest in the dunes and marshes. This little book is the answer.

BOSTON, January, 1913.