82 
House & Garden 
For Christmas — 
THESE are special Christmas suggestions for gifts 
of McCutcheon’s Handkerchiefs —allPLire Linen. 
They are, however, merely repre¬ 
sentative of our vast and compre¬ 
hensive assortment. 
Ladies’ 
By way of variation from conven¬ 
tional hemstitched handkerchiefs, 
there’s the attractive new style with 
double rows of Revere stitching. 
Block-work mddels are new, too, 
and very decorative. Both priced 
at 50c. The dainty Madeira Hand¬ 
kerchief with eyelet-embroidery and 
scalloped edge shown at top, is only one of a large collec¬ 
tion of lovely designs for 75c each. And at $1.00 there are 
models of exquisite texture and workmanship with Irish 
Embroidery in a myriad of attractive designs. These 
Handkerchiefs are absolutely pure 
linen. 
Men’s 
These are the big generous size 
Handkerchiefs that men like. And 
the styles are very attractively 
varied with Woven Cords and 
Tapes in stripes and squares. Some 
of them are quite plain with the 
new wide border and Revere stitch¬ 
ing. All pure linen, at $1.00 each. 
Order by Mail 
We recommend to your special attention our 
mail order department which gives prompt and 
painstaking attention to all Mail Orders. Many 
patrons leave the choice of designs entirely to us, 
knowing from experience that they will be quite 
satisfactory. 
Children’s 
Delightful little squares of pure 
linen, machine-embroidered with 
quaint animals and birds. 25c each 
or 3 in a McCutcheon Christmas 
Box for 75c. 
James McCutcheon &. Co* 
Dept. No. 44 
Reg. Trade Mark Fifth Avenue and 34th Street, New York 
Building In Bermuda 
{Continued from page 78) 
pink or a tawny buff used for the walls. 
There is, however, none of the indiscrim¬ 
inate and picturesque variety of colora¬ 
tion which meets the eye along the shores 
of the Mediterranean. One or two of the 
larger houses, which require water for 
cattle, and the barracks have portions of a 
convenient hillside covered with cement 
as rain-catches which collect the water in 
large tanks situated below the slope. In 
the case of private houses this additional 
provision is not necessary: the houses af¬ 
ford a sufficient roof-area, through their 
low and flat construction, to supply the 
average householder. 
The Available Material 
So much for the general influence of 
climatic conditions upon the buildings of 
Bermuda. The available local materials 
have also had an effect upon details of 
construction. The distance of the islands 
from the American coast makes importa¬ 
tion of building materials both incon¬ 
venient and expensive. Fortunately the 
island is provided with native stone which 
is abundant, easily quarried and cut to 
practical size, light and easy to transport 
or lift, and of such a nature (aeolian lime¬ 
stone) that it becomes hard when exposed 
to the action of the moisture-laden atmos¬ 
phere. This alteration changes it from a 
light yellow to a pale blue-grey—a color 
rarely seen in the inhabited houses, how¬ 
ever, owing to the use of whitewash. 
One rarely sees brick, its only apparent 
use being for the steps leading to the main 
doorway of the houses. Ironwork is al¬ 
most non-existent and is not practical 
owing to the prevalent moisture of the 
air: balustrades and gates are made of 
wood or, in the newer houses, concrete. 
The only wood on the island is the Ber¬ 
muda cedar—really a kind of juniper. As 
old Silvester Jourdain said as early as 
1610 : ‘‘There is an infinite number of 
cedar trees, the fairest I think in the 
world,” and the most recent visitor is in¬ 
clined to echo the words of the early 
traveler. The trees, however, are not 
large and are knotty and branched, so 
that big beams are rare. The wood is 
nevertheless used for all practical pur¬ 
poses of domestic construction: indoors 
it is oiled or finished to show the grain; 
outdoors it is painted to preserve it from 
the weather. 
A General Impression 
The general impression that one gets of 
a typical Bermudian house is this: a low 
white building, in shape a rectangle, an 
L, H, or [, with a stepped roof made of 
inch-thick stone laid like slates, good 
fenestration, large external chimneys, out¬ 
side staircases, wide verandahs, and a 
number of outhouses for various purposes 
—the whole group picturesquely related 
to trees and groups of shrubs, and gleam¬ 
ing white in a setting of dark green 
studded with brilliant flowers, in 
“this eternal spring 
Which here enamels everything.” 
We have now seen how the needs of the 
climate and the possibilities of available 
materials conditioned the builder in 
Bermuda. There remains the question of 
fitting his house into the landscape. 
Though the island is only twenty-five 
miles long and its area no more than 
twenty square miles for a population of 
18 ,ooo, one gets an impression that there 
is plenty of room. Apart from the inevit¬ 
able crowding of structures in the com¬ 
mercial and hotel section of Hamilton, 
houses are for the most part independent 
and provided with gardens and grounds. 
In the country, the estates in many cases 
are quite extensive, and by no means all 
the land is continuously cultivated. As a 
result houses can grow sidewise instead of 
upward, and the addition of a new room is 
an easy matter. Some of the one-story 
houses have increased by this process of 
accretion until they present anomalous 
plans and very interesting details of 
roofing. Each additional wing provides 
automatically an increase in the water 
supply. 
As the soil of the island is merely a sur¬ 
face covering, ranging from 2 " to 20 " 
thick, all the houses are upon a solid rock 
foundation. In some cases building mate¬ 
rial will be quarried from a hillside and the 
house will be constructed partly in the 
space thus excavated, thus blending with 
the landscape and, by this close relation¬ 
ship, avoiding the impression of a man¬ 
made excrescence, so common in modern 
development schemes. 
The island, though it never rises to a 
greater height than 250 ', offers a variety 
of slopes on its numerous ridges and 
small hills. Many houses are built on 
the sides and tops of these elevations and 
thereby enjoy the double advantage of 
having an excellent view of the land and 
sea and of catching the breezes. 
Bermuda's Garden Soil 
Bermuda, in spite of its scant soil, is 
extremely fertile and affords the builder a 
considerable range of decorative shrubs 
and plants to draw upon as an aid to 
making his house a part of the landscape 
as well as an individual possession of 
beauty. Among the trees and shrubs 
which grow abundantly are the cedar, 
poinsettia, loquat, citron, orange, lime, 
lemon, banana, screw pine, royal palm, 
palmetto, prickly pear and sea grape. 
Hibiscus, oleanders and honeysuckle 
grow in clumps and in hedges and flower 
abundantly. It is by no means unusual 
to see hibiscus hedges 14 ' high and cov¬ 
ered with flaming red or salmon-colored 
flowers; and the oleanders frequently 
reach a height of 20 '. The rich red soil 
found in parts of the island is excellent for 
growing potatoes, strawberries, beets, 
onions, lima beans, carrots and parsley, 
and in different parts of the island are to 
be found tobacco, cotton, indigo, aloes, 
the castor-oil plant and coffee, though 
none of these in large quantities. 
This list is sufficient, however, to show 
that the householder has an abundance 
and variety of growing things to draw 
upon for landscape gardening or house¬ 
hold use. As few of the trees suffer a sea¬ 
sonal loss of leaves, and as there are 
three crops of vegetables in a year, the 
island offers distinct advantages over our 
Northern climate, where the work of the 
landscape gardener is evident for only 
half the year and the kitchen-garden lies 
for months under a deep covering of snow. 
Bermuda, therefore, provides an inter¬ 
esting and comparatively simple study of 
the development of a type of building 
well-suited to the needs of her people. 
The frank recognition of necessities as the 
primary condition of a dwelling gives an 
impression of honesty to the building 
which is reenforced by the avoidance of 
all unnecessary and purely artificial dec¬ 
oration. The comparative restriction in 
the range of materials emphasizes this 
simplicity and preserves the unity of the 
houses. 1 * 
