Life in the Shifting Dunes / A popular field guide to the natural history of Castle Neck, Ipswich, Massachusetts

Crane’s Beach Diorama, Museum of Science
A popular field guide to the natural history of Castle Neck, Ipswich, Massachusetts, with attention to the unusual ecological relationships peculiar to such an area
BY LAURENCE B. WHITE, JR. Museum of Science, Boston
Illustrated by HENRY B. KANE
A PUBLICATION OF THE MUSEUM OF SCIENCE, BOSTON
Copyright, 1960, by the Museum of Science, Boston All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission of the publishers. Library of Congress Card Number: 60-8980 Printed in the United States of America by The Murray Printing Company Forge Village, Massachusetts
This popular field guide to Castle Neck, Ipswich, Massachusetts, was the inspiration of Mr. Cornelius Crane, who has summered there since boyhood. Two years ago, Mr. Crane asked us if we would be willing to undertake a survey of this typical dune area if funds were made available for the study. We were delighted to cooperate in the project, and our Education Department undertook it with real enthusiasm.
Some preliminary work was done in 1957, but during July, August, and part of September, 1958, Laurence B. White, Jr., of our Education staff, and Geoffrey Moran, his assistant, moved to Castle Neck. It is Larry who has compiled this field guide.
Larry has been associated with our Museum since his Junior High School days, when his consuming interest in natural history made him an almost daily visitor, and later a valued Education Department volunteer. Now, after his graduation from the University of New Hampshire, where he majored in Biology and Education, he has joined our permanent staff. I recount this only to point out that this study was undertaken by a born and bred New England naturalist who enjoyed every minute of his work on it.
Finding a little cottage on the side of a marsh on the road to Little Neck, Larry and Jeff took it over as their combined summer residence and laboratory, and spent the July and August weeks in Thoreau-like exploration of the beach and dunes, the swamps and woodlands of Castle Neck. Their personal relationship with the living things on the Neck is feelingly reflected in this guide: sympathy with the heroic struggle for survival on the dunes; admiration for the hardihood of the little-admired Poison Ivy; amusement with the odd ways of the Common Barnacle, which “goes through life standing on its head and kicking food into its mouth with its feet”; and exasperation with the mischievous practice of noisy Crows, who delight in wrecking an Owl’s daytime sleep.