HOURS AMONG ROCKS AND CLOUDS. 
365 
that are continually taking place in the aspect of Nature, and may perhaps serve 
to explain other anomalies that are very puzzling to the observer, is I think worth 
recording, particularly as it has by accident met my view in a periodical now 
extinct, call the 44 Cambrian Magazine , or Celtic Repository” (1829), into which 
I opine few naturalists are likely to dip. The author, who appears to have been 
one of the angling fraternity, though he has concealed his name, thus mentions 
the occurrence. 
44 There is a circumstance respecting the Bygeilyn (Shepherd’s Pool), contrary 
to the general laws of Nature. Twenty years ago there were no fish in it. A 
writer has observed, that all bodies of water produce fish; some of the Alpine 
lakes, situated amid almost inaccessible glaciers, have invariably been found to 
contain Trout; and he sensibly adds, that no doubt the spawn was originally 
carried up through the agency of birds; which fact I am prepared to support, 
having myself shot a wild Mallard in the bill of which I found the ova of fish. 
About twenty years ago some gentlemen were Grousing on Plinlimmon; the 
conversation turned upon the peculiarity of Bygeilyn being destitute of the finny 
race, and the possibility of stocking it from a neighbouring rivulet; a staff net 
was procured, and some dozens of small Trout, caught in the river Rheidol, were 
turned into the lake. At that time myriads of Horse Leeches swarmed in its 
water. Some of the Trout, when placed in the pool, lay upon their sides faint 
and exhausted. Strange as it may appear, the rapacious Leeches attached them¬ 
selves to the sick fish, and actually devoured them. Others of the Trout were 
more vigorous; these, and their progeny, having enforced the lex talionis with a 
vengeance, and not a Leech is now to be seen. The late Captain Jones, R.N., of 
Maehynllaith, and another gentleman now living,were the parties alluded to.” Thus 
far the facts of Mr. 44 Cambrian,” who then enters upon a theory to account for the 
44 former non-existence of fish” in Begalyn, which he supposes might have arisen 
from mineral particles having poisoned the water, now rendered wholesome by a 
thick deposit of black earth over the bottom from the turbary. But with these 
conjectural matters I shall not meddle, and therefore, leaving the pool to its 
repose, must now wade through the bogs up the mountain again—pausing, how¬ 
ever, one moment on the soft turf to refresh wearied Nature with a sandwich 
and a draught of brandy. Barren and naked as the scene is, it certainly now 
stands forth in brighter relief. And here (as the opportunity presents itself) let 
me give a friendly warning to all wanderers never to trust an absent friend with 
the pocket-pistol, and above all never to take it without a case. A few weeks 
after the excursion I am now describing, I was induced, in an evil hour, to join 
a small party in ascending to the apex of the hill from the Cardiganshire side. 
One gentleman had a bottle of sherry in his pocket, with which in imagination 
we had toasted the misty mountain till all its grey cairns rattled their piled 
VOL. in.—NO. xxii. 3 c 
