The names with which I propose to deal are those which imply human habitation. And here at once I part company with those, like Kemble and other writers, who appear to think it a matter of indifference, so long as a name is formed from what they term a patronymic, whether it ends in-ham or-ton, or in such suffixes as-hurst,-field,-den, or-ford. To them all such names connote village communities; to me they certainly do not. If we glance at the map of Domesday Sussex,[11] we see the northern half of the county practically still “backwoods” eight centuries ago.[12] If we then turn to the Domesday map prefixed to Manning and Bray’s Surrey, we find the southern half of that county similarly devoid of place-names. In short, the famous Andredswald was still, at the time of the Conquest, a belt, some twenty miles in width, of forest, not yet opened up, except in a few scattered spots, for human settlement. The place-names of this district have, even at the present day, a quite distinctive character. The _hams_ and _tons_ of the districts lying to the north and the south of it are here replaced by such suffixes as _-hurst_, _-wood_, _-ley_, and _-field_, and on the Kentish border by _-den_. We may then, judging from this example, treat such suffixes as evidence that the districts where they occur were settled at a much later time than those of the _hams_ and _tons_, and under very different conditions. The suffix _-sted_, so common in Essex, is comparatively rare in Sussex, and we cannot, therefore, classify it with the same degree of certainty. Taking, therefore, for our special sphere, the _hams_, the _tons_, and the famous _ings_, let us see if they occur in such a way as to suggest some definite conclusions. The three principles I would keep in view are: (1) the study, within the limits of a county, of that distribution of names which, hitherto, has been studied for the country as a whole; (2) a point to which I attach the very greatest importance, namely, the collection, so far as possible, of _all_ the names belonging to this class, instead of considering only those which happen to be now represented by villages or parishes; (3) the critical treatment of the evidence, by sifting and correcting it in its present form. The adoption of these two latter principles will gravely modify the conclusions at which some have arrived. There is, as Mr. Seebohm’s work has shown, nothing so effective as a special map for impressing on the mind the distribution of names. Such a map is an argument in itself. But although I have constructed for my own use special maps of Sussex and Essex, they cannot here be reproduced.