344 



Ponty-y-spiR (or rather Pont-Esgob, the Bishop's Bridge), the point where it turns 

 S.W. to join the Usk, is not quite 9J miles. The average breadth of the inter- 

 vening hill is, in a straight line from stream to stream, IJ miles; but it varies much, 

 being nearly 3 miles in the extreme measurement at the N.W. col, and diminishing 

 at one point called Dial Garreg, near the bottom, to a little over half-a-mile, and 

 again somewhat widening. Of cultivation proper in the Grwyne Valley there can 

 scarcely be said to be any at the present time, though a few oatfields and patches 

 of potato land occur about Partricio, and perhaps for a mile or two further up. I 

 say at the present time, because the whole valley was in the recent past clearly far 

 more densely populated than now. Ruined cottages are thickly strewn in its 

 lower parts. The land is enclosed for 5 miles up from Pont-Esgob ; the remaining 

 4 miles which lie above this limit consist of unenclosed moorland. 



The botany of these two valleys is varied and interesting — decidedly more so, 

 I think, than that of ordinary hill valleys possessing the same outward features 

 and extent — and Herefordshire naturalists owe a debt of thanks to the ancient 

 Lords of Ewias that they discerned (it may be) the merits of the Grwyne Valley 

 as a hunting ground, and added it to their manor, and thereby to the county of 

 Hereford. Mr. Purchas, in laying out the scheme of the Herefordshire Flora, 

 took in also the Honddu Valley, so far as it lay in Monmouthshire, so that now a 

 great deal of the riches of both these valleys goes to adorn the pages of your forth- 

 coming Flora. 



I do not find that the fact of the two valleys belonging respectively to the 

 watershed of the Wye and Usk makes any observable difference between their 

 Flora. Differences there are of course, some of which will be noted further on ; 

 but not such as can with any confidence be attributed to this circumstance. 



I now proceed to a few botanical notes. One of the plants most likely to 

 strike the eye during a walk into this district in spring is the Bird Cherry, Prunus 

 padus, with its long pendant racemes of white blossom. In the lowlands of 

 Herefordshire it is a rare shrub, lingering only in a few neglected spots ; but in 

 the Llanthony district it adorns most of the hedges, growing in great luxuriance 

 up to the limit of about a thousand feet, but scarcely higher. The Mountain Ash 

 too, Fyrus Aucuparia, another tree belonging to the same natural order, is 

 common throughout the district, and is a great ornament, whether in spring or 

 autumn. This is not so common in the hedges of the cultivated land as at a 

 higher level, where it fills the glens, and clings to the rocky sides of the hills, up 

 to at least 1,800 feet, probably higher. One of the prettiest of these glens, Cwm 

 Bwchel, opens out immediately opposite Llanthony Abbey ; and it was here, in 

 the mossy recesses with their miniature waterfalls and pools overtopped by 

 berry-laden Mountain Ashes, that love of mountain scenery was first wakened 

 in me, when a boy of six. The fruit of this tree is the favourite fruit of the Ring 

 Ouzel ; so much so, that it is said a Mountain Ash tree, planted in a lowland garden, 

 will attract the Ring Ouzel to make a sojourn there during their migration : and 

 the frequency of this rare bird in the Honddu Valley may well be connected with 

 the frequency and luxuriance there of this tree. 



Of common trees, the Lowland, or Common, Elm, Ulmus guberosa and 



