Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 6 (1902).djvu/471



Menai Straits, separating Anglesea from the mainland, are so narrow that they alone would not account for any difference in the avifauna of the island from that of the adjacent portions of North Wales; but the character of the country is entirely different from that of Carnarvonshire. The rugged mountains of the Snowdon Range, with their narrow glacial valleys and ice-scooped and volcanic tarns, are replaced by lowlying undulating country, under cultivation of a primitive sort, interspersed with gorse-covered commons, extensive marshes, and shallow reed-fringed pools. With the exception of the isolated Holyhead Mountain, the high land is all to the northeast, from whence the country gently slopes towards the western shores, where the few insignificant sluggish rivers debouch in sandy estuaries.

Anglesea is singularly treeless, and the clumps of trees—mostly ash—which here and there have been planted round the more pretentious houses, bear evidence, in their gnarled trunks and matted branches, of the fierce salt-laden winds that sweep across the island. The sheltered shores of the Menai Straits, however, are well wooded; from Beaumaris to Llanidan are extensive plantations, giving shelter to Warblers and other Zool. 4th ser. vol. IV., November, 1902.