96 



The term ''Marches" continued, to a late period, to be 

 applied to the waste tracts of country separating Wales 

 and Scotland from England ; and, down to the union of 

 the crowns, the Lords Marchers and the Wardens of the 

 Marches were officers having important duties to perform. 

 The title of Marquis is derived from the same source. In 

 Germany, the Markgraves, or officers of the Mark, gradu- 

 ally became elevated into hereditary monarchs. 



As society advanced, in process of time the boundaries 

 of these "Marks" or separate communities, would become 

 gradually enlarged, until they finally merged into each 

 other, and all visible traces of them were lost — the ec- 

 clesiastical division of the country into parishes, and the 

 civil jurisdiction of the manors and townships, superseding 

 the ancient "Mark!" But, notwithstanding all this, lingering 

 traces of the ancient \dLiidi-7narks, not yet obliterated, may 

 be discovered by the careful observer. Like the fossil 

 remains beneath the surface, giving unmistakeable evidences 

 of a Fauna and Flora different from our own, there remain 

 in our nomenclature and customs fossil casts, as it were 

 preserving the memory of thoughts, manners, and feelings 

 belonging to a state of things long past away. 



A little attention to the names of places in England 

 will discover that the great features of nature, the mountains 

 and rivers, are for the most part called by Celtic names. 

 The mountains of Skiddaw, Helvellyn, Blencathra, and 

 Penygant, the valleys of Glen Coin, Glenridden, etc., are 

 Celtic in their denominations. Amongst the rivers, the 

 Ex, the Avon, the Dee, the Don, the Ouse, the Alun, the 

 Douglas, and the Derwent, with many others, are Celtic. 

 The objects called by these names being definite and marked 

 in their character, would naturally retain the appellations 

 by which they were first known to the Saxon immigrants. 

 It has been so in our own day, in North America, where 

 the Susquehanna, the Mississippi, the Missouri, etc., still 



