might naturally expect buttercups ; nor indeed that the buttercups you do find 



should be the Lesser Spear\yort, Ranunculus flammula, a true plant of mountain 



bogs. Unexpectedly your foot would fall on little crowded tufts of the Bog 



Pimpernel, AnagaJlis tenella, whose delicate pale purple blossoms, with veins of 



slightly deeper colour, contrast so well with the pretty light green of its little 



smooth and wreathed leaves. It is, indeed, a wildling 



" Of fairer form and brighter hue 



Than many a flower that drinks the dew 

 Amid the garden's brilliant shew." 



The pretty Marsh Cinquefoil, Comarum palustre, which generally wants 

 some manoeuvring to be gathered without wet feet, was easily got to-day, and 

 so, too, were numerous rushes ; and upon one of them several larvae of the 

 Hadena Pisi, a very handsome grub, with his deep chocolate-brown coat, yellow 

 striped sides, and pinkish feet. 



The walk, indeed, was most remarkable as a proof of the extreme dryness 

 of the season. In an ordinal y year it would have been simply impossible, and 

 to do so without damp sufficient to wet your shoes was most astonishing. It 

 was happy it was so for the ladies, for it enabled them to take a direct route to 

 the Fall. The sun had come out powerfully, and as the party reached the last 

 small hill, it was a great relief to find the Pont Hen Ehyd, the bridge of the 

 Old Ford, close at hand, standing, as it seemed uselessly, high and dry above 

 the rocky bed of the river Llech, or the river of the flat stone, as the name 

 indicates with singular exactitude. It flows over strata lying horizontally, 

 whose holes and irregularities are due to the power 6f the stream, when in 

 full force angry, impatient, and violent. 



Here attendants and hampers came pleasantly in sight, and the first 

 instinct of every one seemed to be to rush into the bed of the stream. It was 

 delightful to do so, and after the hot walk, to seat oneself on the large cool 

 stones under the shade of the alders that fringed its banks, and rest with the 

 gentle murmur of the stream at your feet. It was a most picturesque place, 

 with enormous masses of rock all tossed and waterworn, and between them holes 

 of varying depth of the clearest water, which, without a ripple on its surface, 

 looked far too innocently pure and gentle to be suspected for a moment as the 

 cause of all the results of wonderful force around it. The rocks — the unvarying 

 insensible rocks — looked much more guilty, though their sides were hollowed 

 out into large holes, and though they had been driven here and there with 

 remorseless energy. 



A few of the visitors, more bold than the rest, climbed round the edges of 



the great pool to the very brink of the precipice. 



" Crept stealthily to catch a trembling glance 

 Into the dread abyss ;" 



and a very good view they got of the valley a hundred feet below, pretty, 



quiet, and peaceful ! Standing where human feet may rarely stand, and yet 



with an utter absence of awe or dread, or any other of the thrilling nervous 



