If Bermuda's prosperity continues to increase, it is to be hoped that the designers of new houses that appear will seek their inspiration in Bermuda's own older architecture. It is eminently appropriate to the climate and other local conditions, harmonious and in scale with the surroundings. It has the unity, charm and simplicity of an architecture that is the unaffected expression and natural outcome of environment, and, from its simplicity, is entirely adaptable to the modern requirements of Bermuda. Architecture such as Italian Renaissance, Gothic and Moorish, referred to above, has no artistic excuse for existing in Bermuda. To those who are familiar with Bermuda and the houses there, these colorless photographs may be but sorry representations of the actuality, and can only serve to stimulate memory. White, or softly tinted houses with weathered green blinds and doors, frequently buried in luxuriant foliage and blossoms of vivid hues, with glistening white roofs silhouetted against intensely blue sky, or backed against the dull green of red trunked cedars, through which may be glimpses of a turquoise sea, make a strong impression on the senses, but fail to register with the camera--even when held by a more experienced hand than that of the author. HISTORICAL NOTE What is now known as Bermuda, sometimes called the Bermudas and at one time known as Somers Islands, is a group of islands said to be over three hundred in actual number, lying in the Atlantic some seven hundred miles southeast from New York, the nearest point on the mainland being Cape Hatteras, in North Carolina, five hundred and seventy miles west. Of these three hundred odd islands, the eight principal ones, totalling in area less than twenty square miles, lie close together and are now connected by bridges, causeways and ferries. A glance at the map of Bermuda shows its general form, with its three almost enclosed bodies of water, the Great Sound, Harrington Sound and Castle Harbor, and nautical charts with soundings marked would show its form extending as reefs under water into a great oval connecting the two ends. These reefs made actual landing difficult, giving the island an evil reputation before its settlement, and no doubt were the cause of many shipwrecks. The islands were known to exist as early as 1511, as they were noted on a map of that date. They received their name, however, from Juan de Bermudez, who came to Spain with an account of them a few years later, although there is apparently no evidence to show that the Spaniards or Portuguese ever occupied the islands or even landed there.