the amplest certitude in the same way. A regular fringe of Scandinavian names along the north and north-west coast of Scotland would, to the present hour, attest most indubitably the fact of a Norse dominion in those quarters operating for centuries, even had Haco and the battle of Largs been swept altogether from the record of history and from the living tradition of the people. To every man who has been in Norway, LAXFIORD, in West Ross-shire, a stream well known to salmon-fishers, carries this Scandinavian story on its face; and no man who has walked the streets of Copenhagen will have any difficulty, when he sails into the beautiful bay of Portree, in knowing the meaning of the great cliff called the STORR, which he sees along the coast a little towards the north; for this means simply the great cliff, _storr_ being the familiar Danish for great, as _mor_ is the Gaelic. Ethnological maps may in this way be constructed exactly in the same fashion as geological; and the sketch of one such for Great Britain the reader will find in Mr. Taylor’s well-known work on _Names and Places_. With regard to the law of succession in these ethnological strata, as indicated by topographical nomenclature, the following three propositions may be safely laid down:--1. The names of great objects of natural scenery, particularly of mountains and rivers, will generally be significant in the language of the people who were the original inhabitants of the country. 2. Names of places in the most open and accessible districts of a country will be older than similar names in parts which are more difficult of access; but--3, these very places being most exposed to foreign invasion, are apt to invite an adventurous enemy, whose settlement in the conquered country is generally accompanied with a partial, sometimes with a very considerable, change of local nomenclature. In reference to this change of population, Mr. Taylor in one place uses the significant phrase, “The hills contain the ethnological sweepings of the plains.” Very true; but the effect of this on the ethnological character of the population of the places is various, and in the application requires much caution. It is right, for instance, to say generally that the Celtic language has everywhere in Europe retreated from the plains into the mountainous districts; but the people often still remain where the language has retreated, as the examination of any directory in many a district of Scotland, where only English is now spoken, will largely show. In Greece, in the same way, many districts present only Greek and Sclavonic names of places, where the population, within recent memory, is certainly Albanian. Inquiries of this nature always require no less caution than learning; otherwise, as Mr. Skene observes, what might have been, properly conducted, an all-important element in fixing the ethnology of any country, becomes, in rash hands and with hot heads, a delusion and a snare.[1]