Paul Daley's description on another thread of how links land formed reminded me of this classic passage by Sir Guy Campbell.
"In the formation and over-all stabalisation of our island coastlines, the sea at intervals of time and distance gradually receded from the higher ground of cliff, bluff and escarpment to and from which the tides once flowed and ebbed. And as during the ages, by stages, the sea withdrew, it left a series of sandy waste in bold ridge and significant furrow, broken and divided by numerous channels up and down which the tides advanced and retired, and down certain of which the burns, streams, and rivers found their way to the sea.
As time went on, these channels, other than those down which the burns, streams, and rivers ran, dried out and by the action of the winds were formed into dunes, ridges, and knolls and denes, gullies, and hollows, of varying height, width, and depth.
In the course of nature these channel-threaded wastes became the resting, nesting and breeding places for birds. This meant bird droppings and so guano or manure, which, with the silt brought down by the birds, streams, and rivers, formed the tilth in which the seeds blown from inland and regurgitated from the crops of the birds germinated and established vegetation.
Thus eventually the whole of these areas became grass-covered, from the course marram on the exposed dunes, ridges and hillocks and the finer bents and fescues in the sheltered dunes, gullies and hollows, to the meadow grasses round and about the river estuaries and the mouths of the streams and burns. Out of the spreading and intermingling of all these grasses which followed was established the thick, close-growing, hard-wearing sward that is such a feature of true links turf wherever it is found."