Welsh Journals

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tarmacadam roads or motor traffic; but they may have seer the whitefronts, the Wigeon and the plover and eaten them too, no doubt. A broader easier track leads from the castle, passing between the grassy ramparts of an earlier fortification, and into a beechwood now shadowy with approaching evening. The satiny trunks rise arrow-straight and point to the pale half-moon. Across the valley a Green Woodpecker's cackling call fades into distance. These few acres are a microcosm of our countryside. Since the ice melted and the glaciers receded, this landscape and its life have been in the making. It has been a slow evolution. In the twentieth century the pace of change is accelerating beyond imagination and the outlook, in an age when short-term financial expediency too often means long-term environmental catastrophe, is threatening and uncertain. We are thankful that the West Wales Naturalists' Trust now owns Castle Woods and that its members are safeguarding it as securely as they can for the foreseeable future. Ty'r Ystrad, Uansteffan, Carmarthen, Dyfed. PROFILE DILLWYN MILES Surprisingly, and perhaps sadly, it is not often that one can meet a Welshman who is fluent indeed scholarly in both his native tongue and the English language, who also includes natural history and wildlife conservation in his main interests, and who, in addition, can blend these attributes with great administrative ability. Such a man is Dillwyn Miles. Dillwyn was bom at Newport (Pembs) in 1916 and was educated at Fishguard County School and the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. From 1939 until 1945 he held the rank of Captain in the Army, serving in the Middle East where, incidentally, in 1940, he established the Jerusalem Welsh Society. Dillwyn returned to Pembrokeshire in 1954 as General Secretary of the Pembrokeshire Community Council; currently he is Director of the Dyfed Rural Council. Mayor of Haverfordwest in 1961, Sheriff in 1965, four times Mayor of Newport (Pembs), County Councillor, Borough, District and Parish Councillor he has led, and continues to lead, a full and active life in the local political scene. In Welsh cultural circles Dillwyn will be particularly well known as The Herald Bard.