82 PLACE AND FIELD NAMES OF DERBYSHIRE, 
referring to the well-known thorn. Derbyshire furnishes THORN- 
SETT, ,THORNBRIDGE, THORNLEY, THORNEY, and HIPTrHORN. 
Names derived from the thorn are very frequént in the Saxon 
charters. 
The assertion of Czesar, that no firs were to be found in Britain 
in his days, has raised much discussion. Certain it is that even 
those places supposed to be named from the fir are singularly few ; 
such are Pinfern in Dorset, and Pinner in Middlesex. There is 
not one to be found in the Charters. In the Peak, however, 
PINDALE seems clearly to point to fzz, the pine tree.* The 
balance of opinion appears to be that in this case Caesar was in 
error, though doubtless any species of fir was then most un- 
common. Whitaker says, that among the many Roman names 
for the fir in the British language, there are three purely Celtic, 
viz :—Scotch, géws; Irish, guémhus; Welsh, fyrmidwydh. But if 
the fir had been originally introduced into Britain by the Romans, 
all the British appellatives of it would have been, as some of them 
evidently are, mere deviations of the Latin adzes. The existence 
of a single British name for it, is in itself a presumptive argument 
that at least one species was known in the island prior to the 
invasion of the Romans. Firs have also been dug up in Chatmoss 
in company with the remains of the birch tree and the oak. 
Matthew Paris is clearly in error, when he tells us that there were 
no firs in England in the days of King John. t 
The names of which fruit-trees form a component part, are 
very infrequent, with the exception of the apple. APPLEBY, in 
the extreme south of the county, is the Derbyshire instance. 
There is also an AppLesy Crorr (T. C. Ilkeston) and the 
APPLETREE hundred. Here again the name proves that this 
fruit was known to the first colonists of Britain. In the Welsh, | 
Cornish, Gaelic, and Irish languages it is invariably called avail, 
aball, or apple. 
* The prefix in Pindale may, however, like Pinhow in Lancashire, be but 
another form of the Celtic fer, a hill. 
+ Whitaker, Hist. of Manchester, vol. ii. p. 45. M@Jatthew Parts, Hist. 
Angl. p. 204. 
