@enetable Wbhosphorescence : 
COMMUNICATED TO THE CHESTER SOCIETY OF NATURAL SCIENCE 
BY THE LATE 
PPR. EMEA 
LATE OF ST. JOHN’S, CAMBRIDGE.) 
Read December 4th, 1884. 
I BELIEVE I may safely say, ‘‘’Tis sixty years since” I 
crossed, in the dead o ight, on horseback, the low hills 
between Tal-y-Cafn Ferry, on the Conwy, and the monastic 
village of Gwytheryn, in Denbighshire, where St. Winifred was 
buried. I am not sure the year was precisely 1824; but I can 
have no doubt in naming the day as the 11th of August, because 
the object of that nocturnal flit was to reach the Moors by the 
dawn of that important day, ‘The 12th,” so as to compete 
hopefully with shooting parties, only too numerous, in a free 
district where the grouse were only too few. I was accompanied 
by a brace of super-excellent pointers, trained after a model 
rarely attained in these ‘‘driving” days, and by an odd pair of 
historical d7ped personages. One was Robert Williams, the 
Miller of Furnace, who shot that rare bird, the Sguacco Heron, 
presented to the British Museum 7” his name, which he had the 
pleasure of reading there some time afterwards; and, with 
pardonable exultation, introduced himself and his bird, in pretty 
good English, to a group of staring visitors! The other ‘‘ bipés 
implumis” was a precocious little cowboy, who developed, under 
my father’s training, a remarkable talent for horticulture, and 
was long known in Llandudno and Conwy markets as ‘John 
Hughes, the Marl Gardener.” 
My elder aide-de-camp, being ex-gamekeeper at Hafodunos, 
was well acquainted with every nook and corner of those moors, 
and with their doundaries. He was therefore invaluable to me, 
in my laudable endeavours to outwit both the feathered tribes 
and my rivals in the field, without trespassing on adjoining 
preserves. A curious accident on the way, however, showed that 
my trusty guide was not absolutely infallible. After we got into 
what used to be, in “the good old times,” an open common, we 
were shortly encountered by sod fences, which were quite new to 
the Miller, and, the night being dark, fairly puzzled him! He at 
once boldly extemporized a gap, exclaiming, in peevish Welsh, 
not easily translated, ‘‘ What mischief in people, to enclose the 
mountain in this way!’’ But this short escape from confinement 
only led into dangerous ground, and we very soon got ‘‘bogged,” 
the horrors of which, with the snorting and plunging of the 
B 
