warmed by the sun to produce garden crops Iceland would become a great market garden for Europe as its soil is exceptionally rich and fertilizer is abundant. Every farm has its potato patch and a bed of turnips in a high walled enclosure near the buildings but the farmer raises only what he needs for his own family. The ground is spaded and the potatoes are planted in beds as we plant beets and lettuce. There may be ploughs, mowing machines, pitchforks and hayracks in Iceland but I have never seen them on any of the many farms I have visited. I have seen a photograph purporting to be from Iceland which shows some of these instruments but there are other items in the picture, such as the costumes of the people, which prove that the negative was made in Sweden. The ride along the sea coast to _Krisuvik_ is mostly a scramble over a mass of lava which is strangely contorted and blistered. A mountain bluff extends parallel with the coast line about a mile from the shore. Prior to the settlement of the country an eruption of one of the volcanoes in this region poured out a large volume of fluid lava which rolled over this bluff in several places and then meandered in various directions. During an entire day’s ride we saw but two houses, comfortless homes of fishermen on a barren shore and far from neighbors. This is a bird shore. Many thousands of sea birds nest in this rough country, far away from sheep and dogs, in undisputed freedom, for they are seldom disturbed by man. Oftentimes the ground for several square rods was literally covered with them. When our trail led through these patches the old birds resented our intrusion, swooped down and pecked at the horses and at our clothing. We were forced to keep one hand in continual motion about our heads to prevent being violently hit with their wings. Over my desk hangs a quill pen made from the wing feather of the great black backed gull, which I tore from this bird as it swooped against my arm. We took lunch this day at _Stranda Kirkja_, Church-by-the-Strand, beside a stream of brackish water which flowed from under the lava wall. It was cool but unsatisfactory as a beverage. We found it too sour to drink. It contained some acid, probably sulfuric, though I had no barium chlorid with which to prove it. After lunch we forded the shallows at the mouth of the nearly land-locked bay of _Vogsósar_, Whale-Mouth, and descended to the shore over a billowy mass of ropy lava. Numerous tide pools were scattered about and in them were countless eider duck with their young as well as many other species. It is well for these birds and for the people who gain a livelihood from their eggs, down and feathers that the sportsman knows nothing of these breeding places and that the sound of the shotgun never wakes the echoes of these basaltic cliffs.