With metal detector in hand
Each weekend he trudges the land:
He sets forth at dawn
And at dusk, all forlorn,
Brings home his pretend contraband.

We should be unwise to laugh too long at this apparently hopeless hobby. As in the good old Klondike days, our dogged adventurer rates his chances at 50/50: each day he either will, or won’t, strike lucky, discovering an Aztec astrolabe, or a Holy Grail, or a plutonium nugget the size of Grand Central Station. There’s no middle ground.