Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 6 (1902).djvu/35

Rh under the cliffs to the north end of the island, then sailed rapidly across the sound and in under the cliffs of Pen-y-Cil, whence we slowly made our way along under the land to Aberdaron. The passage took two hours, a fact worth the attention of anyone visiting Bardsey and hoping to catch the daily mailcart which connects Aberdaron with the outer world.

Bardsey is naturally divided into two parts. Nearly two-thirds of the larger, northern portion—over a mile long and nearly three-quarters of a mile wide—consists of cultivated ground and poor pasture land; and the other third or more is occupied by the mountain (548 feet). The steep, grassy slopes of this (then very slippery from the long-continued dry weather, and a little dangerous on the seaward side) are dotted on the west side with hard clumps of sheep-bitten gorse, and varied by stretches of fern towards the sea. Rocks and crags rise out of the turf at the top and on the north and east sides especially, and sometimes form small cliffs. To lose one's footing on the seaward side would in many places mean falling on to the rocks below or going over the cliffs into the sea. The southern portion of the island, where the lighthouse stands, does not rise more than about fifty feet above the sea. It is connected with the other part by a very narrow neck, and although three-quarters of a mile long is only about a quarter of a mile wide anywhere. It affords only some pasture, poor everywhere, and consisting in places of little more than heather, an inch high, scilla, armeria, and lotus. The only trees on Bardsey are two or three sycamores and a few ashes (really not worth calling trees) which grow at the foot of the mountain, just where the farms lie and shelter them a little with their buildings. Here, too, are some wind-seared elder-bushes. In the little gardens gooseberries and currants grow well to the height of the wall, and there are a few "tea-shrubs," fuchsias, and tamarisks, etc. The banks of earth and stone which form the fences on the low ground are capped with bramble, gorse, fern, and occasionally with a foot of scrubby hawthorn, and one or two larger bushes of the latter may be seen. In one sheltered part of the mountain, at Pen Cristin, there is some taller gorse, not bitten down by sheep into a hard cushion. Two wettish places, fenced in, about ten yards square, where the waste of springs has been utilized to