The grain size distribution measures of a suite of recent beach, dune, and river sands from New Zealand and from Friedman (1961) have been studied. The population of New Zealand sands is comparable to the total population of the combined data. No single descriptive measure (e.g., skewness) can be used to discriminate sands from different environments. A linear discriminant function applied to the New Zealand sand population allows the combined use of the four descriptive measures of mean, standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis. The function distinguishes river sands from beach and dune sands.