328 The Scottish Naturalist. 



Before leaving the subject of Inches, let me advert to one 

 situated about twelve miles from Perth, in the valley of the 

 Pow, in the parish of Madderty — Inchaffray, the site of the 

 Abbey. Its name is interesting. We have the familiar Inch. 

 Affray is a contraction of aifrenti, which again is a modifica- 

 tion of the Latin offerenda. This I^atin word offereuda was the 

 old name for the service of the Mass, so that Inisaifrenn is quite 

 correctly rendered in ecclesiastical Latin, insula inissanDu. Now, 

 if the name Inchaffray had been applied to it only after the 

 Abbey was founded there by Earl (iilbert, we might have con- 

 cluded that (iaelic was the spoken language in the Pow valley 

 and Strathearn long after the close of the twelfth century. But 

 in the deed of gift by Earl Gilbert the place is called Incheaffron, 

 showing that the place bore that name before the Augustinian 

 monks had settled there. We are thus referred to a period 

 further back, and we find that a monastery of Columban monks 

 had existed there. It is next to impossible that in the parish of 

 Madderty there could have been a Columban monastery, and 

 another and separate place where Mass was regularly performed. 

 It is therefore in the highest degree likely that Incheaffron was 

 the site of the Columban establishment, and received its name 

 from the service which the Columban monks there celebrated. 

 In this, as in so many other cases, the Augustinian Abbey of 

 Inchaffray was not an establishment on a new site, but took the 

 place of the much earlier Columban monastery. In this way 

 we are thrown, for the origin of the name, nearly 500 years further 

 back. And the name is a proof, not that (Gaelic was spoken in 

 Strathearn in the l)egmning of the thirteenth century and after- 

 wards, but that Gaelic was spoken in Strathearn when the monks 

 of Columba formed a settlement there : a fact which is quite true, 

 but which we know from other and more direct sources. 



Inchaffray gives evidences of the same changes that the other 

 Inches gave. It stands on the Pow on a level of 130 feet, and 

 rises 8 or 9 feet above the fiat on which it is situated. Before 

 the channel of the Pow was deepened, the 130-feet fiat level was 

 subject to inundations. When the country was inundated, it 

 ])resented the appearance of a long lake. InchaftVay would be- 

 come a small low island ; and such was the spot surrounded by 

 water or morass when the Cehic inhabitants gave it the name of 

 inch. 



Wlien we ascend from the low grounds, where the abcrs and 

 iiwhes are found, to a higher level, we find a difterent state of 



