Animal Vegetable Mineral
Beach Wrack.
Eugenia found a hearteningly small amount of garbage at the beach this morning.
Animals.
All the better to enjoy the other more interesting things offered up by the waves…like chitons, limpets, snails, sponges, fish, birds, crabs and giant barnacles…
.
.
Vegetables.
Eelgrass, algae, driftwood!
.
.
Minerals.
Rocks, minerals and beach glass – wait a minute – is glass garbage or a mineral?
.
Vegetable/mineral
And sometimes the vegetables are attached to the minerals…
.
.
Animal-Mineral
And if the animal is dead and rotted, and all that is left is the mineral, what then…is the silica in glass the same as the silica in a sponge? Is this science or philosophy?
.
.
Quimper Hittys 
Thank you Eugenia! Always thoughtful, always educational, always a visual feast.
We encourage curiosity – it takes us interesting places!
Who knew Eugenia was into philosophy? I say glass with sharp edges is garbage, but when it is all frosty and smooth-edged, it’s getting back to mineral and a beautiful collectible.
We like the blue glass especially.
Eugenia looks so happy exploring the beach. Apparently it made her quite thoughtful too. Maybe she will be a scientist when she grows up!
Or a philosopher…as long as she keeps asking questions she will have an interesting life.
too many questions… LOL …I don’t know the answer to most of them. I hope her Hitty mom has better answers than I would, “Google” it! Lovely trip to the beach!
If I don’t know the answer, we go on a research jag…sometimes to Google, sometimes to the Library, sometimes to the Museum…it is always fun!
Sounds like philosophy – and Eugenia is the perfect Hitty for that. I’m voting that glass is both garbage and mineral.
Lovely images. It’s always nice to see beautiful Eugenia.
Eugenia is a thinker, and she thinks you are right that things can sometimes be classified into more than one category.
Hello Eugenia
We have been thinking about the connection between science and philosophy and found out that, a few hundred years ago, they used to be treated as the same thing. With a little belief in magical thinking.
We used to find sea glass on the stretches of the banks of the River Thames and River Medway where the tidal waters receded so we could do a little mud larking. We think that, though it is garbage and could be a danger to small marine life that might get trapped inside it, a bottle does gradually return to its mineral components. It was fun when we used to find the sea smoothed pieces to put in our little garden pond. They are beautiful and so common that they feel as though they belong where the tide deposits them.
But the thing we like best in your haul today is the lovely purple of the inner surface of the crab shell.
Mary NQT xxx
We loved that purple crab shell too – they are so fragile they don’t last long after the otters have done with them!