The name of Ireland, as quoted from Poseidonios, is Ierne, representing an old name Iverna. In Greek, as well as in the early Celtic language of Ireland, the sound of _v_ or _w_ had a tendency to disappear from words. I think, however, that the Greeks may have taken the name Ierne, without the _v_, direct from a Celtic source, for the dropping of the _v_ or _w_ sound in Greek took place earlier than the writing of the oldest extant Greek prose, and if the name of Ireland had been known to the Greeks at so early a time, we should expect to find mention of Ireland in early prose writers like Herodotus. The next known writer who mentions Ireland is Julius Cæsar. The island Hibernia, he writes, is half the size of Britain, and as far distant from Britain as Britain is from Gaul. He calls Ireland Hibernia. Strabo, who wrote in Greek in the first years of the Christian era, also thought that Ireland extended farther north than Britain, and that Ireland had a colder climate than Britain. This notion, I have already suggested, originated in the Latin name _Hibernus_, which as a Latin word meant "wintry," and was substituted for the Celtic adjective _Ivernos_. The people of Ireland, says Strabo, are quite wild and have a poor way of living owing to the cold climate. A somewhat later anonymous writer in Greek has more accurate geographical information, perhaps based on the brief statement by Cæsar, placing Ireland to the west of Britain. Pomponius Mela, whose date is about A.D. 40, calls Ireland Iuverna, a name also used about the same time by Juvenal. It is a nearer approach to the Celtic form as used in Britain, which at the time was partly occupied by the Romans. Mela says that Ireland is hardly equal in size to Britain, but has an equal length of coastline opposite to Britain. Apparently he supposed Ireland to be a long narrow island, about as long as Britain from north to south, but less in breadth. The climate, he says, is unfavourable to the ripening of seeds, but there is such an abundance of excellent pasturage that cattle get enough food by grazing for a short part of the day and, if they are not restrained, they eat until they burst. This is fairly accurate. The Irish climate is less favourable to the ripening of certain seeds, such as wheat, than the climate of neighbouring countries. It is not likely that any other seed but wheat is referred to, and we may take the testimony of Mela as evidence that wheat was known in his time to be grown in Ireland, but not so successfully grown as in other countries. Mela adds: The inhabitants of Ireland are uncivilised and beyond other nations are ignorant of all the virtues, and extremely devoid of natural affection. A little later, in Pliny's time, the knowledge of Ireland among the Romans was far from being exact. Pliny, on the authority of Agrippa, gives the length of Ireland as 600 Roman miles, its breadth as 300. He thus doubles each dimension and multiplies the size of the island by four.