The British Naturalist, 57 



whelming flood. By the interposition of lakes this is prevented : they act 

 as regulating dams ; the discharging river cannot rise higher than the lake ; 

 and thus when the lake is large, a flood which otherwise would flow off in 

 a day, and destroy as it flowed, is made to discharge itself peaceably in 

 weeks. Besides the preventing of devastation, this is of advantage to the 

 country. When the flood passes off, while the rain is falling, and the air 

 is moist and not in a state for evaporation, the land derives but a small 

 and temporary advantage from the rain : but when the water is confined 

 till the state of the atmosphere changes, a considerable portion of it is 

 taken up by the process of evaporation, and descends in fertilising showers. 

 A decisive proof of the advantage of lakes, and the casualties that result 

 from the want of lakes to regulate the discharge of mountain rivers, was 

 unfortunately given in the floods in Scotland, in the summer of 1829. The 

 whole of the rivers that flow eastward from the Grampians have steep courses, 

 but no lakes to regulate their flow; and the consequence was, that they 

 threw down the bridges, flooded the fields, washed away the soil and 

 crops, and did other damage ; while those streams farther to the north, 

 that roll an equal or a greater mass of water, but which are expanded into 

 lakes, did no harm. Mountainous countries, in which there are no lakes, 

 are usually barren, or in the progress of becoming so. The Andes in 

 America, the ridges in Southern Africa, and many other lakeless elevations, 

 are utterly sterile. The mountains of Scotland, and even those of the 

 north of England, have little beauty where there are no lakes; they are 

 covered with brown heather, unbroken by any admixture, save dingy stone 

 and red gravelly banks, where the rains have torn them to pieces. There 

 are none of those sweet grassy dells and glades, and none of those delightful 

 thickets, coppices, and clumps of trees, that spot the watered regions." 

 (p. 99— 101.) 



In celebrating the praises of the Bala Lake, within a page 

 of the foregoing extract, our naturalist, mounting his Pegasus 

 without a curb, becomes quite poetical and enthusiastic. 



" Bala," he says, " though designated by the humble name of a pool, is 

 capable of softening down the fiery spirit of the Cambrian, as he gazes on 

 it from the mountain's ridge ; and the waters are so limpid, that * the 

 lasses of Bala,' by laving their beauties in it on May-morn, excel in 

 brightness all the other daughters of the principality." (p. 102.) 



We mean no offence to the " lasses of Bala,'* whose 

 charms we shall not call in question ; but it requires a spirit 

 of gallantry far beyond what we profess to be possessed of, to 

 put implicit faith in such statements. In short, we consider 

 such effusions as no better than downright trash. The fol- 

 lowing passage is in better taste, and more consistent with 

 sober truth and reality : — 



" The most apparently trivial habits of organised bodies are just as 

 demonstrative of infinite wisdom, as those that attract the vulgar by theii- 

 novelty, or by some real or fancied resemblance to the marvellous among 

 mankind. The times at which the heron resorts to the water to fish, are 

 those at which the fish come to the shores and shallows to feed upon 

 insects, and when, as they are themselves splashing and dimpling the 

 water, they are the least apt to be disturbed by the motions of the heron. 

 The bird alights in the quiet way that has been mentioned ; then wades 

 into the water to its depth, folds its long neck partially over its back, and 

 forward again, and with watcliful eye awaits till a fish comes within the 



