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Nature Notes : 
7’//E SELBORNE SOCIETT'S MAGAZINE. 
No. 228. DECEMBER, 1908. Vol. XIX. 
A WELSH GLEN IN WINTER. 
ATURE, thougli she may sleep sound elsewhere, only 
slumbers fitfully in the Vale of Conway during Decem- 
ber, keeping her hold on the leaves so long that late 
autumn seems almost to merge into early spring with 
no interval of desolation to divide the two. Lovely as are our 
Welsh gorges and streams in their summer dress of green, they 
are infinitely more glorious at this season of the year, though few 
now visit them to record their beauties. Those who only know 
North Wales in the months of July and August can have no 
conception of the added grandeur of the scenery when autumn 
has trailed her skirts over the woods and a first frost has bared 
some of the boughs. It is a typical December day in our glen, 
with a grey wind-swept sky, showing here and there bright 
patches of blue between the masses of heavy clouds that roll 
down from the mountain passes like smoke from a cauldron, and 
fitful gleams of sunshine bursting out in wonderful brilliance to 
make marvellous effects of light and shadow. From this rock 
you may see up and down the whole extent of the Conway 
Valley : the river, winding slowly through the marshlands a mile 
and a half away, is now vivid blue, now inky purple, as it reflects 
the sun or the cloud: that larch-clad hillside, with the shadowed 
fields at its foot, shows dark in contrast to the red of the 
ploughed field on its summit, which is catching the light de- 
scending in rays from that one bright patch above. In a few 
moments all has changed, the larches are glowing gold, the 
marshlands purest emerald, and the summit is veiled in ethereal 
mists floating like threads of gossamer down the slopes. Back 
in the distance, nine miles away, the far mountains are tipped 
with snow, already rosy pink in the afternoon light, against 
which the nearer and lower pine-clad hills make a hazy outline of 
purple. Turning from this wide prospect spread below us, we 
plunge up the glen with our faces towards the gap whence the 
mists are rolling. Ages ago a glacier slid dowm here and left its 
