112 
A WEEK IN NORTH WALES. 
May, 1892 . 
rapids and frequent falls, the rocky sides covered with birch 
and ferns and a great variety of mosses and flowering plants. 
Through great beds of Staghorn moss we finally get to 
the slope of the summit of the mass, Foel Fras, with a height 
of 8,091 feet, according to the guidebooks. From here we 
struck S.W., along the southern slope of the slightly 
depressed ridge connecting this summit with Carnedd 
Llewellyn. This slope is all deeply covered with peat, which 
has in many places broken away in patches, sliding a few 
feet downhill, and making very awkward little obstacles to 
speedy walking, being in many cases four or five feet deep. 
From the top of Carnedd Llewellyn, returning for a short 
distance by the way we had come, we got down a steep slope 
of broken stones, with Parsley Fern in abundance between 
them, into the slightly swampy Cwm Caseg. On the far side 
of the tiny stream at a place, where the bank was some 10ft. 
high, an overhanging ledge had been formed, over which 
water was trickling, keeping, for a space of 20ft. or so in length, 
the whole of the recessed bank covered with a perfect profu¬ 
sion of water plants, and the vivid green of these, contrasting 
with the stony and peaty soil around, made a very striking 
picture. 
A somewhat uninteresting walk (make a note of it, and 
don’t try to walk for eleven hours without any food if you 
can help it) brought us to Bethesda. 
The next morning we drove up Nant Francon as far as the 
foot of Llyn Ogwen, in pretty steady rain, and walked up into 
Cwm Idwal. The rain spoilt the view, but we could just get 
a sight of the grand moraine heaps on the west side of the 
lake, and from the high slopes by the Devil’s Kitchen note 
their arrangement in lines along the lake and transversely 
in a series of curves convex down the valley. 
A huge block, fallen from the crags above, composed of 
slate with felsite interposed, showed very neatly the different 
result of the great earth pressures on different textures of 
rock. The slate was cleaved, while the felsite was thrown 
into rough folds, in which the original flow directions were 
indicated by the elongated nodules it contained. 
A little further on, at a place where the high ground begins 
to fall awav towards the Pass of Llanberis, we came across the 
outcrop of one of the sheets of felsite which was quite crowded 
in parts with curious nodules similar to those just mentioned. 
The appearances presented by these, both as hand specimens 
and in thin section, seem to me to differ a good deal from those 
described by various authors—Professors Bonney and Cole, 
Miss Raisin, and Mr. Harker—as characteristic of the nodular 
felsites of North Wales. In most of these the nodules are 
