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 358 MedicBval Military Architecture. when Bishop Kirby had a licence to crenellate. It was also a moated quadrangle. Highhead Castle, on the Ive, is drawn by Buck. Here was a castle in 1326, but the licence is dated in 1342. The castle was rebuilt in 17 14. Dalston Hall is a castellated house, probably of the middle of the fourteenth century. The Roman wall may be traced at various points, both east and west of the passage of the Eden. It is well seen in a field close to Drawdykes, a stiff, square farmhouse, built on the site of a Roman Castellum. The inscription " Diis Manibus," built into its walls, is said to have been dug up in Carlisle, near the old citadel. CASTELL COCH, GLAMORGAN. THE river Taff, from its origin under the Brecon Beacons, after a course of about 26 miles through the northern and moun- tain district of Glamorgan, escapes by a deep and narrow ravine across the last elevation, and rolls its course, unfettered, to the Bristol Channel. The ridge which it thus finally cleaves, and which divides the hill country from the plain, is part of the great southern escarpment of the coal basin of Glamorgan, supported there by the mountain lime- stone rising from below, and in its turn reposing upon the old red sandstone, the denuded surface of which forms, under the later hori- zontal rocks and drift gravel, the basis of the plain. The escarp- ment, extending for many miles along the contiguous counties of Monmouth and Glamorgan, is traversed, in this immediate neigh- bourhood, by the three passes of the Ebbw, the Rhymny, and the Taff. The heights bounding the latter river, though in actual eleva- tion below some other parts of the chain, produce a very striking effect, from the abruptness of their rise from the plain. These heights, on each side of the pass, must always have been regarded by the inhabitants of the country as places of great security. On the right bank of the river, the huge lumpish sandstone mass of the Garth rises to 981 feet above the sea, and is crowned by two remarkable tumuli, well known as landmarks in the vale, and visible even from the distant shores of Somerset. The lower Garth, which rises to the front of the great Garth, opposite to Castell Coch, forms the right bank of the pass. The elevation on the left bank, though lower, is more precipitous. It presents, in the lichen-stained crags about its summits, and the rich verdure which clothes its sides and base, all those features so well known to geologists as characterising the scenery of the moun- tain limestone. Nature has rendered the west and south sides of this height —