THE OLD QUARRY 105 



green wall with a patch of gold in spring, whilst in autumn 

 the children find the old quarry a fruitful garden for 

 blackberries. The wren has her nest on the ivy-clad wall; 

 the whitethroat and willow wren hunt for aphides on the 

 broad sycamore leaves and fill the air with delicious 

 music; the wasps have taken possession of the rotting 

 thatch, and the air hums with the vibration of myriad 

 other gauzy wings. The rabbit throws out the sandy 

 earth, and the fox has safe shelter in a pile of broken 

 rocks, useful for his home, if beneath the notice of 

 man. The turtle-dove purrs in the birch, the wood- 

 pigeon coos in the beech; nightly the owl leaves his ivy- 

 bower to hunt round the old quarry, whilst the bats dodge 

 in and out amongst the branches. In the close summer 

 days the hollow hums with insect life ; millions of whirring 

 wings produce a low but steady booming note, and 

 in the evening the trees and bushes are haunted by the 

 silently flying, ghostly moths. Nature has reclaimed 

 her own. 



Man must have stone and brick and coal; he can no 

 longer exist in natural holes or beneath the uncertain 

 shade of the trees. Yet the artistic eye is shocked by the 

 damage and unsightly mess of the quarry, the mine, and 

 the brickfield. ^Esthetic taste rebels against the destruc- 

 tion of the picturesque, and demands that something 

 must be done to stop the levelling of a Penmaenmawr, the 

 quarrying of an Ailsa Craig, the mining in a Tilberthwaite 

 Ghyll. Are these outraged champions of nature prepared 

 to do without stone and metal ? Let them wait. Let 

 them look, for instance, at the Thames Embankment, and 

 then visit the great quarry on Lundy Island, whence the 

 stone came. Nature, there, has reasserted herself and 

 reconstructed marvellous beauty. There is nothing 

 sordid or unsightly in those fern and heather clad granite 

 rocks, even if some show the tool-marks and drill-holes. 



