A WELSH ROADSIDE, 



149 



bit of walled-in Welsh lane is fraught with 

 much interest of its own for those who choose 

 to look at it aright. For the boundary walls 

 are built, not of square-quarried stone, but of 

 round and shapeless boulders, often thickly 

 dappled with patches of grey or orange 

 lichen, and loosely piled together, in rough 

 primitive fashion, without cement or mortar. 

 If one examines them closely they prove also 

 to be scratched and grooved with parallel 

 lines ; and these lines the geologist at once 

 recognises as due to the grinding action of 

 glaciers. The boulders, in fact, were trans* 

 ported hither by the great ice-sheet which 

 once covered the whole country side here- 

 abouts, and which ran out far into the bed of 

 what is now the Irish sea. 



Indeed, the entire side of Llawllech con- 

 sists for the most part of one huge moraine, 

 a mere mass of glacial debris, mainly made 

 up of fine mud, with ice-worn boulders and 

 pebbles disposed loosely through its midst, 

 like raisins and currants in a school plum- 



