Wales is a land with a rich heritage and culture, in many ways far removed from that of England, and my husband's family has had a close connection of its natural history in many of its aspects, from the time when Lewis Weston Dillwyn went to live in Swansea in 1803.

Foreword.

Welcome to central Wales. Welcome to the land of the red kite, of remote hillsides and unique plants - the land where the last native Prince of Wales and indeed the last wolf in Britain were killed; a land of 18 major reservoirs which slake the thirst of distant conurbations; welcome to the Wye, the Usk and the Severn where Byron, Shelley and Keats and the hymn writers William Williams, Pantycelyn and Ann Griffiths of Dolanog found inspiration.

Introduction.

From his vantage point as A Shropshire Lad, Housman wrote 'Westward on the high hilled plains where for me the world began...', but in reality the origins of life on earth predate, by some 3,000 million years, the oldest Welsh rocks, which are a mere 600-700 million years old.

The making of Powys.