The earliest known name applied to Britain is found in a treatise on the World ascribed to Aristotle, in which the larger island is called _Albinn_, and Ireland referred to as _Ierne_; and it is worthy of notice that at the present day the former is the name applied to Scotland by the Highlanders, who call themselves the _Gael Albinnich_. The first author, however, who gives us any information about the early inhabitants of the north part of Scotland is Tacitus, who, in his _Life of Agricola_, devotes a few lines, in a parenthetical way, to characterising each of the great divisions of the people who, in the time of that general, inhabited Britain. Tacitus tells us that in his time the inhabitants of Britain differed in the habit and make of their bodies, and from the ruddy locks and large limbs of the Caledonians he inferred that they were of German origin.[25] This glimpse is clear enough, but tantalizing in its meagreness and generality. What does Tacitus mean by _German_--does he use it in the same sense as we do at the present day? Does he mean by Caledonia the whole of the country north of the Forth and Clyde, or does it apply only to that district--Fife, Forfar, the east of Perth, &c.--with the inhabitants of which his father-in-law came in contact? We find Ptolemy the geographer, who flourished about the middle of the 2d century A.D., mentioning the Caledonians as one of the many tribes which in his time inhabited the north of Scotland. The term Caledonians is supposed by some authorities to have been derived from a native word signifying “men of the woods,” or the inhabitants of the woody country; this, however, is mere conjecture.