n6 Wild Life in Wales 



gathering cans, and purple-stained aprons are looking 

 askance upon our presence now. 



But we are wandering away from the matter in hand. 

 Beneath the waters of the present lake lies buried the site of 

 an ancient village, the houses, churchyard, and other traces 

 of which were bodily removed when the reservoir was 

 formed, and the building now utilised as a boathouse on 

 the northern shore is said to be what remains of an erstwhile 

 chapel. The houses now nestling on the south bank of the 

 Vyrnwy, near the base of the huge dam, represent the 

 moved village, on its new site. On an eminence, near the 

 other end of the embankment, stands a palatial hotel, for 

 the convenience of anglers, and others, visiting the district, 

 and largely patronised by the merchant-princes of Cotton- 

 opolis. The hotel was undergoing extensive alterations at 

 the date of my last visit, it having been found inadequate 

 to meet the demands made upon it during summer. The 

 lake is well stocked with common and rainbow trout, which 

 afford diversion to numerous visitors. I had the curiosity 

 to run up the catches entered in the Anglers Book at 

 the hotel, and found that, over a period of eleven years, 

 ending with 1904, the number of trout killed annually had 

 been about 3000, averaging a little over 10 oz. apiece. 

 The period includes some lean years, and the fish appear to 

 be increasing in size as well as numbers ; but, even so, the 

 lake would scarcely seem to be at its utmost capability. 

 Probably, as in most waters at a highish altitude, the dearth 

 of food is most felt in the early spring months, when the 

 large fish are recovering from the exhaustion of spawning, 

 and when they can least afford to go hungry. In summer 

 there is an abundance of insect-food ; but moor-land streams, 

 hurrying over cold, bare rock, and comparatively poor soil, 

 can never compete in the way of raising large fish with those 

 draining fat, meadow land, in a lower country. As the 

 trees grow up, and as other vegetation increases round its 

 margins, the lake itself ought steadily to improve as a 

 hatching ground for all kinds of insect, and crustacean life, 

 the increase of which will, no doubt, be reflected in the 

 improving size and condition of the trout, and meanwhile a 



