120 Wild Life in Wales 



distance appear, in places, almost to overhang the water. 

 On one of these Craig-yr-Ogo Ravens still attempt to 

 breed every spring, but are generally destroyed by the 

 keepers. I saw two deserted nests in 1905, and the bodies 

 of two of the unfortunate old birds hung suspended from a 

 rail, in company with three poor Buzzards, at the rear of a 

 keeper's dwelling. In the following season, I understood 

 by the orders of the lessee of the shootings, the Buzzards 

 were not molested, and the young from at least one nest 

 were successfully reared. 



The two principal streams which feed the lake enter here 

 through rugged gorges in the mountain side, each forming 

 a series of fine cascades, or Pistylls as they are termed. 

 That above Rhiw Argor is particularly grand, the water 

 tumbling under a tree-fringed cliff, over a sort of giant's 

 stairway, each step of which is represented by a huge ledge 

 of slaty rock. In the uppermost steps the rock has been 

 upheaved, and lies at various angles to its original bed, and 

 here the water often rushes over a smooth face of sharply 

 slanting rock, twenty, thirty, or even more feet wide. Of 

 course, to be seen at its best the stream should be in flood ; 

 but at any time it is a fitting place for contemplation on the 

 amount of power which is daily running to waste in some 

 of Nature's great engineering schemes. Thorns are inter- 

 mixed with the alders, and oaks, on some of the lower 

 slopes above Rhiw Argor, and, in summer, lighten up the 

 glen with patches of white " May." Higher up, their place 

 is taken by the hardier Mountain Ash, which, distorted and 

 crippled by the foul storms of winter into the very forlorn 

 hope of trees, yet manages to hang out a few garlands of 

 snowy blossom on its more sheltered side, to be replaced, in 

 autumn, by a scarlet bravery of berries, that supply welcome 

 pickings to Mountain Blackbird and Missel Thrush. Grey 

 lichens, and mosses, are rampant everywhere in the moisture- 

 laden atmosphere, hanging in the sheltered crannies, from 

 branch and rock, in festoons of " witches' hair " that, to the 

 imaginative rustic, at nightfall, call up the Gwrach-y-rhyhin y 

 or " hag of the midnight mist." The gnarled and twisted 

 limbs of some of the trees are themselves suggestive enough 



