24 LLANDDWYN 



front, an old bird at each end of the line serving to 

 enclose as between quotation-marks this lengthy 

 extract from the family register. 



Sixteen, as far as I can gather, is the limit usually 

 assigned to the number of eggs laid by the Shclduck ; 

 l>ut, having upon several occasions seen this family, 

 and, with one of my companions, counted the young 

 ones for greater security with a field-glass, I am 

 sufficiently assured that a brood may consist of 

 twenty. Whenever seen upon the water and they 

 were generally there at full tide the birds were 

 always in the same formation the young spread 

 across singly in a straight line, with an old bird at 

 each end. 



Strictly speaking, Llanddwyn Island is a peninsu- 

 lar, accessible from the mainland by a short, narrow, 

 low approach, but otherwise sufficiently distinct as a 

 compact mass of rock from any sands lying about its 

 landward end. Something over half a mile in length, 

 and less than a quarter of a mile in breadth, it rises 

 nowhere higher than fifty feet. Its coasts are of 

 hard, slaty shale, steep at some points, and at two 

 places breached by gravel-bottomed inlets, but every- 

 where above jagged into numberless points and 

 blade-like edges. The centre of the island is a small 

 valley, treeless and shrubless, unless dwarf brambles 

 and wild rose are to be accounted shrubs, lying, as 

 they do, flat to the sandy soil, their full-sized 

 blossoms appearing strangely large as they look up 

 straight from a mat of diminutive leaves. For the 

 rest, a coarse herbage, relieved by patches of bracken 

 and sheets of massed pansies, makes a pleasant sight 

 for one just arriving from over the Warren. 



