BALA  , a

market-town and urban district of Merionethshire, N . Wales, at the north end of Bala Lake, 17 M . N.E. of Dolgelley (Dolgellau) . Pop . (1901) 1554• It is little more than one wide street . Its manufactures are flannel, stockings, gloves and hosiery (for which it was well known in the 18th century) . The Tower of Bala (some 30 ft. high by 50 diameter) is a tumulus or " moat-hill," formerly thought to mark the site of a Roman camp . The theological college of the Calvinistic Methodists and the grammar school- (endowed), which was founded in 1712, are the chief features, together with the statue of the Rev . Thomas Charles, the distinguished theological writer, to whom was largely due the foundation of the British and Foreign Bible Society . Bala Lake, the largest in Wales (4 M. long by some 1 m. wide), is subject to sudden and dangerous floods, deep and clear, and full of pike, perch, trout, eel and gwyniad . The gwyniad (Caregonus) is peculiar to certain waters, as those of Bala Lake, and is fully described by Thomas Pennant in his Zoology (1776) . The lake (Llyn Tegid) is crossed by the Dee, local tradition having it that the waters of the two never mix, like those of Alpheus and the sea .