HOURS AMONG ROCKS AND CLOUDS. 365 



that are continually taking place in the aspect of Nature, and may perhaps serve 

 to explain other anomalies that are very puzzling to the observer, is I think worth 

 recording, particularly as it has by accident met my view in a periodical now 

 extinct, call the " Cambrian Magazine, or Celtic Repository" (1829), into which 

 I opine few naturalists are likely to dip. The author, who appears to have been 

 one of the angling fraternity, though he has concealed his name, thus mentions 

 the occurrence. 



" There is a circumstance respecting the Bygeilyn (Shepherd's Pool), contrary 

 to the general laws of Nature. Twenty years ago there were no fish in it. A 

 writer has observed, that all bodies of water produce fish ; some of the Alpine 

 lakes, situated amid almost inaccessible glaciers, have invariably been found to 

 contain Trout ; and he sensibly adds, that no doubt the spawn was originally 

 carried up through the agency of birds ; which fact I am prepared to support, 

 having myself shot a wild Mallard in the bill of which I found the ova of fish. 

 About twenty years ago some gentlemen were Grousing on Plinlimmon; the 

 conversation turned upon the peculiarity of Bygeilyn being destitute of the finny 

 race, and the possibility of stocking it from a neighbouring rivulet ; a staff net 

 was procured, and some dozens of small Trout, caught in the river Rheidol, were 

 turned into the lake. At that time myriads of Horse Leeches swarmed in its 

 water. Some of the Trout, when placed in the pool, lay upon their sides faint 

 and exhausted. Strange as it may appear, the rapacious Leeches attached them- 

 selves to the sick fish, and actually devoured them. Others of the Trout were 

 more vigorous ; these, and their progeny, having enforced the lex talionis with a 

 vengeance, and not a Leech is now to be seen. The late Captain Jones, R.N., of 

 Machynllaith, and another gentleman now living, were the parties alluded to." Thus 

 far the facts of Mr. " Cambrian," who then enters upon a theory to account for the 

 " former non-existence of fish" in Begalyn, which he supposes might have arisen 

 from mineral particles having poisoned the water, now rendered wholesome by a 

 thick deposit of black earth over the bottom from the turbary. But with these 

 conjectural matters I shall not meddle, and therefore, leaving the pool to its 

 repose, must now wade through the bogs up the mountain again — pausing, how- 

 ever, one moment on the soft turf to refresh wearied Nature with a sandwich 

 and a draught of brandy. Barren and naked as the scene is, it certainly now 

 stands forth in brighter relief. And here (as the opportunity presents itself) let 

 me give a friendly warning to all wanderers never to trust an absent friend with 

 the pocket-pistol, and above all never to take it without a case. A few weeks 

 after the excursion I am now describing, I was induced, in an evil hour, to join 

 a small party in ascending to the apex of the hill from the Cardiganshire side. 

 One gentleman had a bottle of sherry in his pocket, with which in imagination 

 we had toasted the misty mountain till all its grey cairns rattled their piled 



vol. m. — NO. xxii. 3 c 



