SHETLANDS IN THE BIRDS' NESTING SEASON 133 



by it. It snapped at him as it rose at his feet, and 

 frightened him. After that, excepting in his mother's 

 carriage, and sometimes in the train, he would not 

 go backwards any more, but began to go forward 

 instead, and when he went to school was soon head 

 of his form. 



The feelings of the little boy in the story when in 

 his backward journeys he found himself with Mesozoic 

 surroundings, must have differed in degree only from 

 our own when, with the din of London scarcely out of 

 our ears, and recollections of flowers and uniforms and 

 ladies' dresses on the Foreign Office stairs fresh in our 

 minds, we found ourselves on a remote promontory in 

 Shetland face to face with living examples of life, under 

 circumstances which almost everywhere else in the 

 British Islands have long since passed away. 



The green of the turf at our feet was broken with 

 patches of thrift and pink campion, and starred in all 

 directions with dwarfed blue squills in full blossom. 

 On the opposite side of the Sound, to our left as we 

 looked southwards, a mile or so off, lay the Island of 

 Mousa, with its almost perfect Broch in full view. 

 To our right lay a little land-locked bay, a perfect 

 anchorage for a Viking's boats, with deep water still as 

 a pond, though a stiff breeze was blowing, and both 

 open sea and Sound were white with breakers. On the 

 narrowest point of the isthmus were the ruins of a 

 second Broch commanding the promontory and bay: 

 and on the mainland opposite, within twenty yards, 

 stood a crofter's homestead, built with stones from the 



