The engineer who makes the road unwittingly plans it in such fashion as to be of service to the folk of moor and marsh, of shore and furrow. In Orcady every road, sooner or later, leads to the sea. In former days the sea itself was the great highway, and therefore close to its shores are found the old kirks and kirkyards. For by sea men came to worship God, and by sea they were carried to their long home. The kirks and kirkyards being beside the sea, the road comes thither to them. It comes down also to the piers, the slips, and jetties, which play so important a part in the lives of the islanders. Thus the road passes within a few yards of the haunts of all the divers, swimmers, and waders that frequent our shores. Also in making a road the aim of the man who plans it is to avoid, so far as possible, all ascents and descents. In carrying out this aim he raises the road on embankments where it passes through low and marshy grounds, and makes cuttings through the higher lands. Where it runs through such a cutting the roadside ditches catch and keep a little store of water in a dry season, and thither plover, snipe, redshanks, and dotterel bring their velvet-clad birdlings to drink. If the season be wet, the road raises above the marsh a comparatively dry platform, on which the birds may rest when not feeding, and the roadside dykes offer a shelter from wind and sun. But our road draws feet and wings to it in many other ways. It passes now through cultivated fields, with dry stone dykes fencing it on either side; now it runs unfenced through the open moorland, and again along the very margin of the sea. Here it is bordered by marshes and there by a long reach of black peat-bog, and everywhere it woos with varied wiles the living things of earth and air. Before the dykes have seen many seasons they begin to deck themselves with velvet mosses, and to the miniature forests of moss come insects of the lesser sorts, flying and creeping things, red and brown and blue. In pursuit of these small deer come the spiders, which lurk in crevices of the walls and spread their cunning snares across the mouths of culverts where farm roads branch off from the highway. Long-legged water-skaters dart to and fro among the floating weeds on the surface of the stagnant ditches; and over these ditches the midges weave their fantastic dances on summer evenings. The litter of passing traffic brings hurrying, busy, burnished beetles, which find harbourage in the loosely piled banks of ditch scrapings that form the boundary between highway and moorland. Where the road, with its generous grassy margin, runs like a white ribbon with green borders through the brown moors, wild flowers that are choked or hidden in the heather spread themselves to the sunshine—primroses and daisies, clover red and white, milkwort and tormentil, hawkweed and violets, thyme and crowfoot: their very names read like a poem. The number of small wild