318 In Touch with Nature. 



wearing the whole island slowly but surely away. 

 A word here about waste-land. Such is not neces- 

 sarily barren tracts, cold, gray sand dunes, or 

 forbidding rocks. Nature is often most active 

 where man finds no foothold. This is the waste- 

 land that I have in mind ; land that makes it pos- 

 sible for a man to be a naturalist; land where he 

 who loves Nature loves best to linger. 



Sitting upon the damp sand, dotted with bits of 

 the old house and pipe-stems, I burrowed into the 

 low bank with a garden-trowel, making little hori- 

 zontal holes that would have pleased the swallows, 

 saving them half the labor of nest-building. But 

 at last the steel struck a resisting object that was 

 not a stone, but a curious, long, thin brick. This 

 was the outlier of the treasure beyond, and the 

 digging henceforth was a pleasure, notwithstanding 

 the many tree- roots that had enviously wrapped 

 about the one-time belongings of the defunct 

 Dutchman. A part of a wall was finally exposed, 

 and many small, pale-yellow bricks. The larger 

 red ones were generally perfect, but every yellow 

 one was broken. Next came a part of the roof, 

 still intact, three large curved tiles, and beneath 



