zSz The Scottish Naturalist. 



words denoting the confluence of one stream with another, or of 

 a stream with the sea, are "Aber" and " Inver." Among the 

 many services which Dr WiUiam Skene has rendered to the 

 early history and the early language of Scotland, there may be 

 mentioned his clearing away from these words a great amount 

 of rubbish which had gathered around them. He has shown 

 that the view which represented Aber as being Pictish and 

 showing where the Picts lived, Inver being Gaehc and showing 

 where the Gaels lived — Aber being the confluence of a stream 

 with the sea, and Inver being the confluence of one stream with 

 another — has no foundation in fact. There is the old Celtic root 

 " Ber," signifying water : with the prefixes «, in^ and com^ we get 

 the words Aber, Inver, and Comber. The last has not been 

 used in this district ; at least no trace of its use now exists. Aber 

 seems to have been the older form, or at least to have become 

 obsolete while Inver was still a living word in the language. 

 You will find Abers and Invers on the same stream, but the 

 In vers lower down than the Abers. 



We thus, at the outset, find that two races at least have lived 

 in this locality — a Saxon-speaking race, now inhabiting it, and 

 a" previous Celtic-speaking race. There are some indications 

 which suggest, on philological grounds, that when the Celtic 

 wave of the Aryan immigration first reached these shores, the 

 land was inhabited by a non-Aryan race, which the Celtic dis- 

 possessed or absorbed. The river-names of a country, especially 

 the names of large rivers, maintain great vitality. Now, while 

 most of our river-names can be traced to a Celtic root, there are 

 some which refuse to submit to this process without a very con- 

 siderable stretch of imagination, but rather point to an earlier 

 non-Aryan language, spoken by men inliabiting the country 

 before the first Celtic wave reached it. Philology points to the 

 conclusions at which the geologist lias on his own ground arrived 

 with regard to the neolithic inhabitants. 



When the Celtic inhabitants made a settlement on the banks 

 of a stream, and called the place the mouth of that stream, it is 

 surely only reasonable to infer that the place so designated was 

 at any rate somewhat near the mouth. It would be absurd, and 

 an abuse of language, to call a place the mouth of the stream if it 

 was not near the moutli, but midway between that and its source. 

 We have Abernyte so situated in our day. The place itself could 

 never have been the exact spot where the earliest Celts witnessed 

 the water of the rivulet entering the sea ; for at the village the 



