Agriculture of North Wales. 
575 
fertile vales. On the smaller mountain farms I saw several 
patches of gorse planted for the purpose of serving as winter pro- 
vision ; but they were not cultivated with such neatness of 
management as to render the example worthy of exact imitation, 
whilst a preponderating number depend upon the hedges for their 
supply. That the system of growing gorse as winter food for 
stock might be extended in Wales with great advantage, I am 
willing to admit; but in the management of what I saw grown, 
there was certainly nothing peculiarly interesting. In no part 
of North Wales would the advantages of extending the alternate 
system of husbandry be so permanently conspicuous and pro- 
fitable as upon those elevated mountain farms where the grazing 
of black cattle forms the principal occupation of the farmer, as on 
most of such farms there are extensive tracts of peat moss easily 
reclaimable, particularly those places from which the indifferent 
crop of hay is now procured. There are wide-spread tracts of 
land — and the remark applies particularly to Merionethshire and 
the Western part of Montgomeryshire adjoining thereto, which by 
paring, burning, draining, and liming, would produce excellent 
crops of turnips and rape (the latter especially), which would 
enable the farmer to maintain as large, if not a larger, amount of 
stock in winter than summer ; besides the practice would give 
him the whole amount of profit derivable from the rearing of the 
calf until the ox was fit for the butcher. From extensive ex- 
perience I am aware that before such heath or bog land, which 
almost always contains a considerable amount of vegetable 
matter, can be profitably cultivated, it is indispensably necessary 
that lime be applied to the same ; the question therefore of future 
improvement is in a great measure restricted to the facility with 
which that substance can be procured, and the cost of the same. 
It unfortunately happens that the great extent of bog and heath 
land alluded to is at a considerable distance from limestone and 
a still greater one from coal ; there are, however, besides the 
extensive band of carboniferous limestone which stretches from 
Llanymenach through the counties of Flint and Denbigh to the 
Ormsheads, and appears again in the island of Anglesey, 
independent beds and outcroppings of limestone, which are to be 
found stretching in two or three bands through the Berwins, the 
principal one known as the Bala limestone, and adjacent to the 
eastern side of the Arenigs and the western side of the Hiraethog 
range. 
Mr. Davis says of this limestone, that 
' Its north-eastern extremity comraences at Cader Dinraael, near 
Cerreg y Druidion, where lime was burned in the seventeenth century. 
There it may be observed on the right hand side of the road leading to 
Glyn Deffwys ; afterwards at Llwyn y Ci, near Rhiwlas, and crossing 
