Welsh Journals

Now all that labour has come to fruition and the paintings are beautifully reproduced in volume 3 of The Spiders of Great Britain and Ireland. Volume 2 (on the family Linyphidae) is due for publication in 1986; volume 1, which covers all the other families with detailed text and black and white drawings, is already available. While the specialist may still need to consult British Spiders by Locket and Millidge, Michael Roberts' authoritative volumes will stand beside it as the definitive modern work on this group of animals which has attracted so many gifted amateur workers over the years. One's only regret is that the very high price will make it almost unattainable for the young amateur developing an interest in spiders. M.J. Morgan The building stones of Cardiff. (Geological Trail Guides) J. W. Perkins. University College Cardiff Press, 1984. 96pp., illus. £ 2.95 (Paperback). ISBN 0 906449 77 4. Books on building stones are rare and the present guide is therefore to be welcomed. To my knowledge there are only two books on the stones used in buildings in Wales. The first, Medieval castles in North Wales. A study of sites, water supply and building stones, was prepared by Dr. E. Neaverson of Liverpool University an expert on the Carboniferous rocks of North Wales and published by the University in 1947. The second, The stones of Llandaff Cathedral, was compiled by Dr. F. J. North of the National Museum and published by the University of Wales Press on behalf of the Friends of the Cathedral in 1957. There are a number of other much smaller studies which are almost exclusively in archaeological journals. They include two by Neaverson, on St. Asaph Cathedral (1945) and the church of the Vale of Clwyd (1948), both in Archaeologia Cambrensis; and a number by North as appendices to the various excavations of his archaeological colleagues, Cyril Fox, V. E. Nash-Williams and W. F. Grimes (again, largely in Archaeologia Cambrensis). John Perkins' book, the first attempt to provide a trail guide, deals with the materials used in the larger buildings in the City Centre of Cardiff, along Bute Street and around Mount Stuart Square, and in the Cathedral City, Llandaff. It provides a competent guide to the seven itineraries, which include the Portland Stone buildings of Cathays Park, the limestone-rich Castle (exterior only), the old Central Post Office building in Westgate Street, equally rich in granites, the Cathedral which 'contains examples of several stones not recognised elsewhere in these trails'; and the amazing Ebenezer chapel, the only building in the City to make use of ballast material from the docks and, therefore, demonstrating an enormous range of stone from many countries. One of the author's problems is to provide a trail guide and at the same time give brief explanatory passages of the geology of the sources. The result would, I feel, have been more satisfactory if the explanatory material had been longer and separate from the descriptive guide. This I feel would have allowed the author to be a little more discursive. I am sure, for example, that it would have been helpful to draw attention to Dr. North's Limestones: their origins, distribution and uses (Murby) which, although over fifty years old, has a wealth of interesting material on the use of calcareous rocks in building, and with many examples from South-east Wales. The frontispiece to North's book, for example, is a part of the interior of the entrance hall to the National Museum. It illustrates Portland Stone walls, the stairways and floor of pale fossiliferous limestone from the Cote d'Or associated with black Carboniferous Limestone from Belgium, while the Ionic columns are of Mazzano Marble from Italy: and in the foreground stands the 'Wounded Amazon' by the Welsh sculptor John Gibson, RA, illustrating the application of crystalline limestone in sculpture. In the chapter on the limestones in the Carboniferous System of rocks, North reminds us that it was the Rev. W. D. Conybeare, one-time Dean of Llandaff (and co-author of the first textbook on geology), who first introduced the terms Carboniferous and Carboniferous Limestone into the stratigraphical column. I am sure also that North's study of Llandaff Cathedral deserves more than a curt listing in the bibliography. It is a widely praised work of over 100 pages which provides the full context for the details condensed by John Perkins into six pages of his guide. It also provides many fine illustrations. Indeed, the overall standard of presentation in the book, published by the University of Wales Press in 1957, is materially higher than that by the University College Cardiff Press in 1984. The reproduction of many of the photographs in the latter is of very poor quality. All the illustrations of buildings, incidentally, are of exteriors. And lastly, it would surely have helped to refer to the exhibits of slate and slate quarrying in the Industry galleries of the Museum, where the material itself not readily seen because it is used mostly for roofing can be seen in its natural context, and the methods of producing suitable thin 'sheets' described and illustrated. In spite of these criticisms John Perkins' book is well worth consulting; and, hopefully, the author will follow it up with a complementary volume on the buildings of the National Museum's Welsh Folk Museum at St. Fagans, where there are nearly two dozen re-erected buildings from a wide range of localities in the Principality and each one of which reflects the geology of its locality. D. A. Bassett In a green shade. Essays on landscape 1970-1983. Richard Mabey. Hutchinson, London, 1983. 186pp. £ 7.95. ISBN 0 09 1543207. The work contains a decade or so of Richard Mabey's essays. They include reprints, with minor emendations, of introductions and prefaces to books and of articles and reviews from such magazines as Birds, The Countryman, Illustrated London News and Vole. They serve as a stocktaking of his position as observer and commentator in today's threatened landscape. As one reviewer put it: 'He has a passion for maps and these pieces are in a sense his deeply personalised map-readings of the areas he has explored, including those belonging to Gilbert White, Richard Jefferies and many other guides to inimitable territories'. 'Somebody might investigate the link between natural history and extremely good prose. Mabey's writing is as satisfying to read as that of his heroes.' The book is worth the money just for the six pieces from Vole and for the brief historical note on the idiosyncratic magazine. He reminds us that Vole (1976- 1981) was intended to be 'radical but nonaligned, ecologically informed but able to hold its head alongside the literary monthlies (the media having largely forgotten that nature was part of our culture), and never becoming sombre at any price'. D.A. Bassett