438 The Zoologist- — Octobek, 1866. 



confusion. Once ihey formed part of Snowdon, but ages since were 

 rent and hurled from the parent mountain, and slowly borne downwards 

 on the primeval glacier to their final resting-places. The heat was 

 intense, rendered doubly so by the reflection from the surrounding 

 cliffs; saving the wild melancholy wail of the buzzards, there was not 

 a sound in this wild spot. No cry of small bird, not even the hum of 

 an insect's wing broke the intense silence : all Nature seemed to rest 

 hushed into repose by the blaze of the noonday sun. The young 

 buzzard on the rock, and the parent bird, wheeling slowly above ia 

 those magnificently graceful circles, were the only living things which 

 gave animation to the scene. I some days afterwards heard the cry of 

 a buzzard from the rocks in the Pass of Aberglaslyn, but did not 

 succeed in rising the bird. 



Raven. — By no means uncommon among the Welch mountains : I 

 saw several during my stay in Wales. They may frequently be seen 

 near the summit of Snowdon, doubtless attracted by fragments of pro- 

 visions cast away by the tourists who mob the mountains during the 

 summer and autumn months. The man on the mountain informed 

 me that he had for four years noticed one raven in particular, as a 

 constant hanger-on about the summit ; he knew it by its having lost a 

 leg. I observed a pair flying about the huts at the top during the half 

 hour of dense mist I had the pleasure of spending there. 



Chough. — During my stay on the shores of Llyn Cwellyn, Mr. 

 Roberts, the proprietor of the " Snowdon Ranger Hotel," informed 

 me that, as he called them, " a curious breed of jackdaws" nested 

 every year on the opposite side of the llyn in the precipices of the 

 Mynydd Mawr: he described them as having "red legs and bills, the 

 bills thinner and longer than the jackdaws and turned downwards;" that 

 after the breeding-season they retired with the young broods to the 

 elevated sheep pastures ; and that they might be found more or less 

 during the year in the neighbourhood of Llyn Cwellyn, — he had shot 

 three from the rocks last year ; that they usually nested in the same 

 overhanging cliffs as the kestrels. Some he had seen in an old quarry 

 to the left of the Caernarvon road. Although on several occasions I 

 visited this rock I was not fortunate in meeting with the birds. It is cer- 

 tainly an admirable situation for a breeding-place for the choughs, and 

 perfectly inaccessible to the most daring birdnester. There were several 

 holes and fissures, which, judging from the whitewash on the outside, 

 had lately been used for nesting purposes, but no choughs, old or young, 

 were seen ; nothing but the kestrels before mentioned. I afterwards 



