392 The Report. 
ing where some rougher irregularities have been removed. There 
is no other inscription than the name and dates of birth and death 
cut into the wrought plinth; there is nothing whatever on the 
upright block itself. 
The subscription raised by the Society for Mrs. Britton amounted 
to about £70, and this sum she has appropriated to defray the 
expenses of the monument at Norwood. W.C. 
To THE EDITOR OF THE WILTSHIRE MAGAZINE, 
Siz, 
I beg to be allowed to rectify an assertion that I made too broadly at p. 
199 of this volume: viz., that an initial ” is never dropped in our Germanic 
languages. I had in my mind those words in which it precedes a vowel, and ought 
to have so limited the expression. There are numerous cases in all these lan- 
guages where an / once preceded J, n, r or w, but is now no longer heard. Indeed 
it has been dropped in all of them, and in all cases before J, n, and 7, as for 
instance in hlihan, hlaf, hleapan, hlud, hnut, hrefen, hreod, which have be- 
come laugh, loaf, leap, loud, nut, raven, and reed. Similar changes have taken 
place in the Germanic languages of the Continent where an / has formerly pre- 
ceded aw. It is in English only that it has been retained: and here by some 
strange caprice the A is now written after the w, as for instance in whale, whom, 
wheat, while, which were formerly spelt hwel, hwem, hwet, hwil, dnd in 
German are wall-fisch, wem, weitzen, weil. 
This / before the consonants /, n, 7, and perhaps before vowels also, must 
have formerly had the sound of ch, for in proper names, when these were used in 
Latin or French, it was replaced by ch, as in Chlodovyicus or Clovis fur Hludvig, 
Childeric and Childebert for Hilderic and Hildebert, Chlodomere and Chlodo- 
valde. Ina few cases this 2 before a consonant has in modern English been 
replaced by a ¢ or &, as in Cleeve from hlew, and knoll from hnoll. In Scotch 
it is become gu as in quhair, quhen, where, when, quhene, a bit, from Anglo- 
Saxon hwene, quhig, whey, from Anglo-Saxon hweg, quhit, wheat, from Anglo- 
Saxon hwet. 
Iam, Sir, Yours, 
R. C. ALEXANDER. 
Hammersmith, Dec. 13th, 1858. 
REPORT. 1858. 
The Committee of the Wiltshire Archeological and Natural History Society 
will not occupy the attention of its Members with any longer Report than will 
be sufficient concisely to set before them its present condition and the results of 
the year 1858. 
As the Society has now been in existence some years, during which it has ha 
the honour of enrolling among its Members a great number of the most intelli- 
gent gentlemen of the county, it will be readily understood that there is no 
