Agriculture of North Wales. 
559 
hazel loam wliicli had been broken up from the wild state during 
the last two years, covered with oats and grass of the best descrip- 
tion, offering ample encouragement to proceed further ; on the 
other hand, there are large tracts of land covered with only two 
or three inches of active soil, yielding a stunted herbage of caricii 
juncii, agrostis. Sic, much intermixed with dwarf-heath, the sub- 
soil consisting of a mixture of dirty-yellow coloured clay and 
gravel, highly retentive of moisture ; that a large extent of the 
Hiraethog range consists of this, intermixed with peat, must be 
admitted. The question of the propriety of attempting the re- 
spective cultivation of each I shall leave to another period. Por- 
tions of the range must be held as an exception to the general 
rale, such as the vale of Llanrwst, Conway,* and other intersect- 
ing vales, which, though they may not possess the high fertility of 
the vales of Wrexham and Clwyd, consist of first-rate soils. If 
we cut off that portion of Caernarvonshire known as the promon- 
tory of Lleyn, which I did not visit, but which Mr. Davis de- 
scribes as being similar to the Isle of Anglesea, and draw a line 
from Caernarvonshire to the mouth of the Dyffi, continuing the 
same fiom the mouth of the Dvffi to INIallwyd, from Mallwyd to 
Conway, and Conway to Caernarvon, we shall have presented to 
us a section of the country of the form of a rhombus. In this 
latter are situate the highest peaks in Wales; viz., Snowdon, 
Cader Idris, Carwdd, Llewellyn, C. Dafydd, Penman Maur, &c. 
(Sec, whilst its eastern limits pass over the bases of the Arenigs. 
Arran Mowddy, &c. &c., with the exception of a narrow interval 
on the shores of the Menai Straits and in the vicinity of Bangor, 
where there is a small outer-cropping of limestone and the coal 
measures, the whole of this district is composed of the proto- 
zoic rocks, frequently thrown up in the most abrupt and preci- 
pitous manner. Very little land of good quality is to be found in 
the district I am now describing ; it is only to be seen in the 
neighbourhood of Caernarvon, Bangor, the v.estern side of the 
Conway vale, the vale of Festiniog, the banks of the Mau, the 
Unwin, and the Dyffi, together with the narrow vales on the bor- 
ders of minor streams, too numerous and unimportant to be par- 
ticularly described. The greater part of the best soils in this dis- 
trict should only be termed second-rate quality. The principal 
portion of the northern part of the division is covered with barren 
mountain, principally consisting of slate, but frequently intermixed 
with a siliceous grauwacke, the soil formed from the disintegration 
of which is of a cold retentive nature, generally of a blue or 
bluish-grey colour, which rarely presents itself at the surface, 
except when it is seen in the act of forming, being the diluvian of 
* The eastern side of the Vale of Conway is on the upper siluiian forma- 
tion : the western portion is on the protozoic. 
