The climate is a mild and humid one, with abundant rainfall, with a fairly even temperature throughout the year, varying not more than 35 degrees or so, subject, however, to high winds and occasional hurricanes. With a fertile though rather scanty soil, agriculture has been carried on with varying degrees of success since the first settling of the island, though it appears the island was never wholly self-supporting in this respect. Fishing, whaling and shipbuilding were other pursuits carried on until recent times. The local indigenous cedar, that still predominates and originally covered the island, afforded a lumber that could be used for housebuilding purposes, as well as giving an excellent wood for shipbuilding and for furniture. Many interesting pieces of furniture, in native cedar, made by island cabinetmakers, still exist. The islands are formed of soft stone and sand with a thin surface of soil, the whole resting on a volcanic substructure of extreme age. The so-called "coral" of which the islands are formed is in reality a true Æolian limestone, formed of wind-drifted shell sand with a small percentage of coral material. This stone occurs throughout the islands, varying in compactness and suitability for building purposes, but the hardest of it is easily quarried, cut into blocks for walls and slabs for roofing tiles, by handsaws, and may be trimmed with hatchet and adze. It is too soft and brittle to lend itself readily to fine ornament. For this reason Bermuda's houses show few purely ornamental motives in stone. In some of them there are semicircular arched projections over windows, called "eyebrow" windows, and a few crude pediment forms used as decorations. Finials on gable ends are not uncommon, but in any case all forms of carving are reduced to the lowest terms of simplicity. Mouldings on the exterior or moulded cornices on buildings seem to have come only with the advent of Portland cement. Some of the gateposts have coarse mouldings cut in stone. Though the stone, when exposed to air, hardens somewhat, it remains too soft and porous to stand well without protection. When burned it gives an excellent lime, which is used with sand as a mortar in which to set the stone, and as a stucco inside and out to protect from moisture and disintegration, and finally as a whitewash for finish and cleanliness.