SANDBURG, CARL (1878- ), American poet, paper man, and interpreter of folk-songs, was born at Galesburg (Ill.), Jan. 6, 5878. The son of a poor Scandinavian immigrant, he had a wandering, hard-working youth, with little schooling. During the Spanish-American War he saw active service in Porto Rico, and there got the inspiration for study at Lombard college, Galesburg. As magazine and newspaper writer, and editor of varied experience, and as secretary to the mayor of Milwaukee (1910-12), Sandburg had ample opportunity to acquire the sympathy with the underlings of modern civilization and the knowledge of its ironic contrasts that distinguish his verse. His bludgeon-like phrases alternating with lovely, singing lines, his vivid etchings of the unbroken prairie and the fretted sky-lines of the industrial cities, together with his unaffected humani tarianism, won him several prizes for his verse, which includes Chicago Poems (1915), Corn Huskers (1918), Smoke and Steel (1920), Slabs of the Sunburnt West (1922), and Good Morning, America (1928). Rootabaga Stories (1922) was a favourite with children, but it was Abraham Lincoln—the Prairie Years (1926), Abe Lincoln Grows Up (1928)—that revealed Sandburg as a prose writer.
See Harry Hansen, Carl Sandburg, the Man and His Poetry (Girard, Kan. 1925: "Little Blue Books," No. 814) with bibl.
or SAND-LANCE. The fishes known under these names form a small family (Ammodytidae). Their body is of an elongate-cylindrical shape, with the head terminating in a long conical snout, the projecting lower jaw forming the pointed end.
A low dorsal fin occupies nearly the whole length of the back, and a long anal commences immediately behind the vent, which is placed about midway between the head and caudal fin. The tail is forked and the pectorals are short. The absence of ventral fins indicates the burrowing habits of these fishes. In the Japanese Bleekeria small jugular ventral fins are present. The scales, when present, are small ; but generally the development of scales has only proceeded to the formation of oblique folds of the integu ment. The dentition is quite rudimentary.
Sand-eels are small littoral marine fishes, only one species at taining a length of i8in. (Ammodytes lanceolatus). They live in shoals at various depths on a sandy bottom, and bury themselves in the sand on the slightest alarm. Sand-eels destroy a great quantity of fry and other small creatures, such as the lancelet (Amphioxus), which lives in similar localities. They are excellent eating, and are much sought after for bait. The eggs of sand-eels are small, heavier than sea-water and slightly adhesive; they are scattered among the grains of sand in which the fishes live.
Sand-eels are common in the north Atlantic ; a species scarcely distinct from the European common sand-lance occurs on the Pacific side of North America, another on the east coast of South Africa. On the British coast three species are found.