here, of which I often heard in my youth, the last of them having been killed by Richard Bateman of Llynbedith, after the Speakers' time, I think they were likely to have been of a breed I lately saw in Caermarthenshire, supposed to have existed there ever since the time of the princes of South Wales. They might easily have been brought from thence, and their habits and character would have been much more suitable to the extent of this park than those of the fierce and shy wild cattle of the north, which cannot be kept in a space less than what is fit for red deer. How little adapted they are for any but a wide range of ground, was shown in my remembrance in the neighbouring park of Emral, where an unfortunate blacksmith, going to old Sir Richard Puleston's hunting stables, was knocked down by a stag and killed. The new Ordnance Survey has been completed and published for Flintshire since I began this book; it commences at the northern end of our parish, where the township of Willington and the cottages of Talarn Green adjoin the river Elf, a name which I do not perceive that it has preserved as it ought to have done, merely calling the stream there by the modern vulgar term of the Wych brook. The Survey then proceeds through Tybroughton, Halghton, and Hanmer, to Broning ton and Bettisfield, and finds there are in all Total area of the Parish 14,807.942 The scale on which this great map is drawn is such, that it shows the flower beds in the garden here, and grouped and single trees; among them I distinguish some walnuts, to whose round and flourishing tops the West wind cries Sparge nuces now, which thirty years ago were nuts themselves, brought by me from the old Whitehall, at Shrewsbury. In nomenclature, though attention has been directed to it, the Survey rather fails; for instance, where was the name of Bryn Vechan discovered belonging to Gredington? They have not marked the Oaf's orchard on the Fens Moss; the stream is shown, but not the Roman name of the river Roden. There is a place called Cælica, which looks like a name attached to some new ritualistic establishment; it is, in truth, nothing of the kind, but perhaps was originally "Caer liky," which, I believe, may mean Lucy's bank or hill. I see no more traces of shortcoming in this fine work, for which we are under infinite obligations to those who directed it; the services it may render in the re-arrangement of fences, without disturbing necessary bounds, an agricultural improvement of some delicacy, though of primary importance, promise to be great. The names of Bettisfield and Hanmer have been reproduced of late years on the shores of the estuary of the Dee, where they represent the settlements around two collieries of mine. The engineering at Bettisfield, which was conducted by Mr. Woodhouse of Derby, under the auspices of Sir William Jackson, is supposed to be one of the finest examples of the application of science to the conquest of natural difficulties. I had prepared a memoir upon it, but it hardly comes within the scope of this book, for the places are in the parishes of Holywell and Whitford. Certainly, I might have added it to the account of Sir Thomas the Cavalier, by whom that property was acquired in the peaceable time of King Charles I., before the breaking out of the civil war. Bettisfield, October 3rd, 1875. H. A MEMORIAL OF THE PARISH AND FAMILY OF HANMER. Moronto fu mio frate ed Eliseo, Mia donna venne a me di val di Pado, CACCIAGUIDA to DANTE. Paradiso, Cant. 15. CANNOT undertake the minute and protracted office of a local antiquary, nor spell over Welsh pedigrees extended like the Aurora borealis into all the regions of the sky; yet it is useful sometimes when better fulfilled than by myself, and acceptable and agreeable also when it flatters vanity of any kind. kind. I address myself, however, to something more than vanity. The twenty years by which the law defends our possessions ought not to limit our knowledge of the past; there is something in ignorance of it which is justly to be held ignoble; where men have it B not they substitute inventions, and they are not always harmless ones; and imagination plays strange pranks, as should we require testimony beyond our own experience, we may learn from Lord Bacon.1 On the other hand, to describe the real affairs of a rural district and the persons concerned in them in any amusing way, is an attempt hard to satisfy. All the harder because of the writers become classic who have succeeded in that line. We may read their stories, and dwell upon the pictures they present; but if we would follow in their train, we may chance to find ourselves as far away from them as from Paradise, while we have the authority of the great Italian poet and of his ancestor Cacciaguida for believing that such familiar legends are permissible even there. All that is in my power is, following a genealogy of names which appears, after the manner of Wales, to have been preserved attentively, to make it less meagre by a few notes, as did Sir John Wynn of Gwydir. Not that I would begin as he did, however I might do so if I liked, with Griffith-ap-Conan and the rest; the names of tribal chiefs have little more 1 "Natural History," century x. section 945. |