SUMMER IN LLEYN. 45 



hard, cold eye on you if you approach them too closely. Con- 

 tent to have posed the whole world of bird-men with the great 

 Puffin-puzzle. How without dropping the five fishes in their 

 beak do they catch and stow away number six in that curious 

 wrinkled "gape"? I know no pleasanter way of smoking a 

 pipe than sitting on one of these breezy islands and pondering 

 on this, and the other great question, Where do all the Puffins 

 go to pass the winter ? 



" Amusive birds ! say where your hid retreat, 

 When the frost rages and the tempests beat ? " 



Along the south coast between the foot of Ehiw and Aber- 

 daron is a strip of rich country with good farms, but still no 

 trees worth the name. There are hedgerows to some extent, 

 but they are made up chiefly of gorse, bracken, and brambles. 

 Some thorns let to go big and elders shelter the farms ; they are 

 big enough to attract the Green Woodpecker which I saw there, 

 though it is much more common on the north coast about Carog, 

 where there are low woods. A few hedgerow birds may be seen 

 — Chaffinches, Greenfinches, Hedge-Sparrows, Whitethroats, and 

 plenty of Linnets and Corn and Yellow Buntings. The bay 

 between Trwyn-y-Penrhyn and Mynydd Penarfynydd is a 

 beautiful one, with cliffs which, green and sloping for nearly 

 all their height, have a richer soil than those of Aberdaron bay, 

 and so are more bushed and bird-haunted and flowery, Geranium 

 sanguineum being the most showy flower. The sand or clay of 

 the Aberdaron cliffs is very poor and cold, and grows the poorest 

 of floras ; they are also weathering and falling away a good 

 deal, which the eastern bay cliffs are not. 



Just as in May the gorse makes yellow the prevailing colour 

 here, so in summer purple is dominant. These Lleyn cliffs and 

 headlands are gorgeous on a bright day. Purple in the distance, 

 but near at hand broken up into the purple of the bell-heather, 

 yellow dwarf gorse, and deep green bracken. The air is full of 

 a honied scent, and butterflies are swarming — Graylings, Meadow 

 Browns, Gatekeepers, and Blues chiefly ; there are a good many 

 Fritillaries, too (I secured a "Dark Green "), and Painted Ladies, 

 but the rather local Graylings were certainly the butterfly feature. 

 On all the higher parts of Lleyn — even Myntho Common, the 



