the sand belong mostly to visitors who are snatching a last sun-bathe before they face up to the rigours of another North American winter.

But our shores and beaches offer a year-round treasure trove of discovery which, according to enthusiast Mr. Chriss Addams, has barely been tapped.

Bermuda, he says, is a beachcomber's paradise, where deserted shores and hidden coves can provide hours of entertainment for the whole family.

Lodged in the sand, sometimes only a few inches from the surface, or embedded and immortalised in rock are fossilised shapes and objects that remind us that the Island's past is still very much a part of its present.

Military buttons, brass nails and hinges, beads -- and even ancient door-knobs are items that might reward the sharp-eyed hunter.

Beaches and shallow, inshore waters seem to be teeming with artifacts from the many ships, both known and unknown that have come to grief on Bermuda's treacherous reefs.

The West End of the Island appears to be particularly rich in souvenirs from the often tragic wreckings that have occurred throughout Bermuda's history. It has been estimated that there are well over 2,000 such vessels off the coast of Bermuda, and of these, quite a few were salvaged by enterprising Bermudians. In fact, it is whispered that some luckless wretches were lured inshore by waving lanterns -- and just happened to founder on the murderous rocks that lay hidden below the surface.

Mr. Addams, along with fellow divers Mike Davis, Rob Power, Alex Davidson and Stephanie Comber, have been specialising in historical underwater research for about ten years. He says that the storms of the past couple of years meant that many weekend trips to their usual diving sites had to be abandoned.

"But this gave us a chance to follow up on tips and clues people had been giving us. We've been amazed at the treasures lying right at our feet,'' he says, holding quite a few of them in his hands as he explains.

"The ballast (used for weighting ships) which has settled in the sand and rocks, can tell you where a ship has come from.'' Mr. Addams explains that salvagers would drag the ships up on the beaches for scrapping, both for the timber and copper and brass fastenings: "There is a beach on Ireland Island that must have had many, many fires where ships' timbers were burned, because the bed rock is almost totally burnt down to two feet or more, which indicates very intense heat.'' He says that careful fanning in the shallow water and pools reveals varying amounts of flint ballast used in early English sailing vessels, including, for instance, the Sea Venture . Pieces of stone recently retrieved were revealed, on closer inspection, to have razor-sharp cutting edges: "What we were looking at, in fact, was pre-historic man's innovative method of obtaining cutting instruments that could be up to 100,000 years old or more.'' Anyone who comes across a black stone on a beach can be fairly sure that it is a ballast stone that has come from an unknown wreck and Mr. Addams says he receives many enquiries about such stones, especially in the area from Wreck Hill in Somerset to the S.A.L. quarry in Southampton.

Another unexpected find was a handful of aboriginal Indian trading beads, which had been used by sailors in their dealings with the North American natives around 400 years ago. They turned up as part of an early ship's ballast.

Mr. Addams was surprised to discover so many military buttons from various British regiments, showing heat damage. Subsequent research has revealed that these came from soldiers stationed here who had fallen victim to yellow fever epidemics. As the origins of the disease were unknown at the time, the clothing of the dead would be gathered by convicts from the prison hulks and either burned on the nearest beach -- or, in some cases, dumped overboard in "gunny sacks'' by some of the convicts.

"We were especially interested to find Royal Navy Hospital buttons, depicting the fouled anchor and broad arrow. The hospital itself stood on the heights of Ireland Island overlooking the lagoon.'' Ironically, of course, it was subsequently discovered that it was the lagoon itself that was providing a rich breeding ground for the mosquitoes.

The British, says Mr. Addams, were always very careful about marking government property: "Even small screws and brass buttons had the broad arrow etched in it. If you take a walk around some of Bermuda's older homes, you will find that not a few of the brass fittings have that arrow on them which means they came from Dockyard!'' Apart from artifacts, Bermuda's landscape offers fascinating clues to the awesome age of the Island. Even a quick stroll along the beach reinforces the view that Bermuda once consisted of a much larger land area. Just offshore are vast peat accumulations, indicating that there was once heavy forestation. In these beds, Mr. Addams points out large burned cedar stumps which seem to show that long ago there was a vast, possibly Island-wide fire.

From time to time, and especially when storms sweep sand away from the beaches, fossilised cedar and bay grape branches and logs, long calcified but still recognisable, are found. Mr. Addams estimates that these may be 100,000 years old or more.

"It would be a brave man who actually put a date on these things, especially the items that have been found embedded in the Walsingham strata of rock. This is generally calculated to be up to two million years old, and can be found at Tom Moore's and again at Dockyard.'' He says that many of the cowrie shells discovered there have retained not only their shape, but also their colour, hinting of a very swift entombment in the shape of massive storms or earthquakes.

All over the Island, fossilised palm trees are embedded in rock and cliff surfaces and Grape Bay is just one of the areas where an unusually uniform pattern of round holes in the shore-line rock are the remains of massive stands of palm trees that flourished thousands of years ago.

BEACHCOMBER Chriss Addams.

BEACHCOMBER'S PARADISE -- Miss Stephanie Comber examines hole-formations, a legacy from the days when Grape Bay was a forest of palm trees and (below) some of the artifacts collected from Bermuda's beaches.