A certain degree of caution is necessary, therefore, in the scientific investigation of this as of all early historical documents. But Dr. Nansen is not content with such reservations as these. He goes so far in the direction of scepticism that the reader wonders in the end that the frail remnants to which he clings are sufficient to hold this author to any belief in the Norse discovery of America. His arguments, if sound, play havoc with the very foundations of the story, and if he sits unmoved among the ruins it is fair to doubt if he will find many to share his attitude, or to trust to the tottering remains. It is advisable, therefore, to examine Dr. Nansen’s arguments rather closely, and to see whether the records which we are investigating are really as unreliable as he has suggested. _Minor Objections._ It would take a disproportionate allowance of space to deal in detail with all the smaller and more incidental points in the argument. Some of them will be found noticed elsewhere in the present volume, and one or two may here be mentioned as typical. Dr. Nansen suggests, for example, that the statement in the Icelandic Annals for 1121 that Eric, Bishop of Greenland, went out to seek (leita) Wineland, shows that Wineland was at that date not a known but a legendary country, for ‘leita’ can only apply to a search for that the existence of which is undetermined. For instances of a use of the word which entirely upset such an argument it is not necessary to look outside the sagas dealing with the present subject, where we find that Aud the Wealthy ‘fór at leita Íslands’ (went to seek Iceland), at a time when her own brother was already settled there, and long after the foundation of the Icelandic colony. Again, Dr. Nansen asks us to see ‘an air of myth and invention’ in the numerous Thor-names—Thorvald, Thorhall, Thorstein, Thorfin, &c.—which are undoubtedly to be found in this story. To find, however, such names conferred on men born in heathendom seems to me to prove less than nothing, particularly when we find in the index of names to the Landnámabók no fewer than fourteen pages in double columns devoted to men and women whose names began with Thor. _Occurrence of Number Three._